A recent situation encountered by by one of our clients has inspired me to pontificate on the topic of “Marketing Committees”. (Read: Why Corporate Web Design is Broken) Recently one of our clients mentioned to me that her marketing committee needed to review our design. Now, while in this particular scenario, I was assured that she has the final say in terms of this type of formality she often encounters with her organization (phew!) which calmed me down about the possibility of revamping our mockups again,  I’ve paraphrased, extrapolated, and derived questions from the our conversation  to represent what can happen when a committee who’s expertise lies just outside of the design world gathers in a room and analyzes site design:

“Does this constitute conventional web design?”

“Can we see research on where the eye lands first?”

“We need a few more mockups to help us decide what we want”

Ok. My suggestion to a marketing board such as this would be to avoid engaging in discussions about things such as “eye path”. While that is important for some applications and marketing material, it’s something “we all” heard about at one point or another in school and is the closest thing to psychological qualifiers most people can connect with in terms of effective design. It’s one of many aesthetic and functional elements that can go into designing a site. Psychologists do exist who study these types of things. But really, this is going too far.

Basically, if a site looks good and is easy to use, it is good. Worrying if evolutionary experts would find the site as perfectly engaging, sustainably and organically designed doesn’t really apply here. The site needs a clear purpose and the goal is to convey what you need to convey as most straightforwardly as possible.

In terms of “conventional” site elements, keep it simple. People travel to web pages because they expect to learn things they think (and hope) that web page holds, not browsing around the page for what they want to find out. That’s where simplicity comes into play and why one text column, one description, and clean functionality often wins out. For example, focus on including more “need to know only if it applies to you” information as you progress throughout the site or down the page. You’ll look if you need to look. Otherwise, no need to worry about it.

While these thoughts may not constitute criteria for a site to win international design awards (we don’t design that way anyways, because they often sacrifice content for aesthetics, which doesn’t really work for many of our clients), the purpose of the site is what drives the design. Don’t overcomplicate things.