This post isn’t about video but it IS about visual communication.
Most of you probably know the old parable about the blind men standing on different sides of an elephant and then asked to describe the creature. The man at the front of the elephant comes up with a completely different experience than the men at the side and tail. Each person’s experience was true, yet because of their blindness, was incomplete.
Today the elephant is your website, the blind men are your visitors (and potential customers) and the cause of the blindness is the screen size of each person’s device. Desktop, Tablet and phone screens come in a variety of sizes and each person who comes to your site has a different experience. Even responsive websites are not intended to provide the same experience for all. Instead, they morph and rearrange themselves based on the size of each screen. This can lead to some unintended consequences.
This became apparent to me this weekend when a friend of mine and I got into a heated debate about the popular online design tool Canva. I was having a cup of coffee and reading Facebook on my Galaxy Note II. On my friend’s recommendation of Canva, I read one of their blog posts and wanted to know more. So I clicked to their home page and here is what I saw:
This company is demanding my personal information before I even know who they are! There is no way to close the popup, and clicking in the blank space had no effect. To me, the signal was clear. If I wanted to learn anything about this company, I’d be forced to sign up FIRST.
I bristled and thought, “How stupendously stupid!” After all, anyone who knows one iota about inbound marketing understands that you need to give visitors a reason to get closer to you. You need to lead them down your sales funnel by providing enough public content to interest potential customers in your product, and THEN (once you have established trust), offer more detailed information (or a trial) in exchange for subscribing.
On my mobile phone, all I saw was a site with the arrogance of withholding any information UNTIL I opted in. I shared my opinion about how I thought this was a stupid and arrogant marketing move on the part of Canva.
My friend was angry! How could I say such a thing about her recommendation! I could easily avoid the popup! According to her, I was “ignorant”, “stupid” and “rude” and that I clearly did not understand marketing and asking for opt-ins is totally acceptable. She also booted me from her discussion group. Ouch!
She was clearly seeing a different elephant.
When I checked it out on my desktop, here is what I saw:
From this perspective. the request for information is benign. It asks (but does not insist) that you subscribe – offering a small menu in the lower left to bypass the popup.
Clearly my mobile experience is not Canva’s intent. Indeed they are not as stupid and ham-handed as I thought they were. (Although I could make a case that a company that is all about design should know better.)
The moral of the story is to check your website on a wide variety of devices and see if the user experience is visually consistent with the experience you intend for your visitors.
The other moral of the story is to understand that others may see something differently on their screen than you see on yours and perhaps check it out on a variety of devices before you jump to conclusions about a company or jettison a friendship.
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