Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The ugly truth about your beautiful presentation
A small business e-commerce website owner asked me for a site review.
At first glance, anyone might say, "Wow! Gorgeous! What a beautiful, rich design!"
But there is a huge problem with this lush, design-heavy, utterly beautiful presentation.
No one is buying anything.
And that's the problem when you build anything with mere "beauty" in mind:
Beauty alone is shallow. (Any 8th grade girl knows that!)
Beauty may initially attract attention. . . but beauty alone does not help anyone deepen a personal, audience, or customer relationship.
The hyper-focus on stunning design is a classic blunder I have seen repeated by countless new internet entrepreneurs, ad agencies, and business presenters.
So what's better than beauty?
For starters: a winning personality. Confidence. Competence. Talent.
(Any 9th grader knows this, too.)
Of course, it's nice to be beautiful on top of being charming, talented, and/or competent. But it's not necessary for success. Take a look at the Top 500 most popular websites in the world (according to Alexa.) How many design awards or beauty contests do you think these websites would win?
Life lesson, learned by age 11. If you focus on beauty before you focus on the core values that really matter, you are going to be disappointed with the quality of your relationships (be it audience, customer, friends, or family.) ¶ 11/28/2006 03:07:00 PM
A small business e-commerce website owner asked me for a site review.
At first glance, anyone might say, "Wow! Gorgeous! What a beautiful, rich design!"
But there is a huge problem with this lush, design-heavy, utterly beautiful presentation.
No one is buying anything.And that's the problem when you build anything with mere "beauty" in mind:
Beauty alone is shallow. (Any 8th grade girl knows that!)
Beauty may initially attract attention. . . but beauty alone does not help anyone deepen a personal, audience, or customer relationship.
The hyper-focus on stunning design is a classic blunder I have seen repeated by countless new internet entrepreneurs, ad agencies, and business presenters.
So what's better than beauty?
For starters: a winning personality. Confidence. Competence. Talent.
(Any 9th grader knows this, too.)
Of course, it's nice to be beautiful on top of being charming, talented, and/or competent. But it's not necessary for success. Take a look at the Top 500 most popular websites in the world (according to Alexa.) How many design awards or beauty contests do you think these websites would win?
Life lesson, learned by age 11. If you focus on beauty before you focus on the core values that really matter, you are going to be disappointed with the quality of your relationships (be it audience, customer, friends, or family.) ¶ 11/28/2006 03:07:00 PM
