Users Want Your Site to be Complicated
I'm sure that many of you have read the headline of this article and thought "No they don't. What on earth are you talking about?" And you'd be correct to doubt, as at first glance it does seem preposterous. To those of us who build websites though, it's a logical conclusion from many of the projects we do.
One of the key things, if not the key thing, that users look for in a website is simplicity. They are trying to complete a task, and do not want to waste their valuable time working out how they are "supposed" to do it. If they feel that they have to work in what they consider the wrong way, they'll go somewhere else.
At this point, you are probably thinking that I'm contradicting myself. After all, I've just argued that users want simple, not complicated. However, as with many things, it isn't quite that straight-forward – simple actually is quite complicated.
There are many tasks that we think of as trivial. For example, take a quick note which was hurriedly scribbled down on a scrap of paper to 'Meet James at Strada Sat 7:30'. Virtually any person will be able look at that and get the key details, yet the writer will get much more out of it. They know that James is an old friend that they're meeting for dinner on the South Bank on the evening of the 19th, casual dress is appropriate and they should be home by 10pm. Give that to a computer however, and you'll just get some text.
The problem is that that note contains 4 (explicit) pieces of information, 3 of which are incomplete and 1 which has multiple interpretations; this is also a concise and unambiguous example to interpret. When you think of the problem this way, it becomes clear that converting that into something a computer can do something useful with is quite difficult. This is an example of natural language parsing, and is something that is currently a major research topic around the world.
Getting back to websites, another example of a simple idea being complicated that I'm sure you have seen and used before is a store finder. Have you ever considered how difficult that task is? First, the website has to determine the location you are searching from. How many possible choices are there, and which is the most likely? Supposed you searched for the town/city of 'Newport' – there are 9 of them just in the UK, and over 25 in the USA, not including those in the rest of the world (or those for which 'Newport' isn't the whole name).
Once the search point has been identified, then the distance to every store needs to be calculated so that the nearest few can be returned to the user. This in itself requires precise latitudes and longitudes for both the search point and each store in order to accurately calculate the distance. As you can see, a lot of work has gone on to solve your 'simple' problem.
Both of these example show that making something that appears simple on the surface requires complex work behind the scenes. Two of the sites we have built that showcase this are Do As The Locals Do and My Life Listed; both have simple concepts that hide the complexity of what’s required to make them work for the user.
Users want simplicity. This, by definition, makes your site complicated – but only behind the scenes. The part that the user sees is simple to use and easy to understand due to excellent design. We can help you with both sides.