Simple works best : Focus on your top task!
I read an article titled “Why websites suck”. It talks about the huge flaw that websites have is that they are too flashy, graphic-heavy, and complicated to access. The best website, the author suggests, is the one that people manage to finish their top tasks on that particular website in an efficient and simple manner. Top task simply means the main objective that the website serves. For example, Amazon’s top task is to get buyers get what they want without much hassles dealing with the side bars, pop-up windows, flashy images etc. So, if people who want to buy a table, they end up on a page that’s absolutely focuses on table.
A very good claim I learned from the article is this: “Every website failure I’ve come across is the organization wanting the customer to fit around how it’s organized, how it thinks, and the language that it uses. By contrast, great websites organize around the customer. It pays attentions to your needs.”
It is so true not only about web design, but products too. Imagine if a product or service is designed to have customers fitted with its features, versus the one designed to fit around customer’s needs, which will more likely be successful? In a value-driven society nowadays, you will realize customer orientation would be one of the company objectives that cannot be forgotten, because if customers don’t perceive value in your products/services, you will definitely lose in the intense competition. A huge mistake that companies will often have is that they are eager to introduce something incredible that everyone will embrace, something so unique that, they forget to think about how that innovation fits into customers’ needs, and that often leads to failure.
A very good example that the article cites is Apple. It says, Ipod started with focusing on making its top task – playing music – something super easy and simple, and people went crazy with it. While other products that offer complex features don’t work out so well. It’s best to have one top task, maximum 5, anything goes beyond that may start getting confusing.
Another example that I could think of is Ferrari. It makes super fancy and high-end sports vehicles, and only that. It’s never connected with the word “affordable”, yet people are crazily dumping in money just to own it. Its top task, I would say, is to be as expensive as possible! Same applies to Harley Davidson mentioned in our class, which some of its top tasks is to build classic and stylish heavy-weighted motorcycles.
*You may read more about top task on this site: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/why-websites-suck-guy-kawasaki.
