Web Design Buzz Words: Functionality

This is a question I get all the time: What does adding functionality to a web site mean?

Basically the conversation gets to this point when I start talking to people about how their sites need to be designed for their visitors, and not for the search engines or for rankings or what have you. Adding functionality to your site means that you’re giving it ease of usability and helping your visitors perform the tasks they’ve set out to perform when visiting your site. Regardless of what those tasks are.

For example: Your site is optimized for the phrase “blue widgets” because that’s one of your company’s most popular products. So when a visitor comes to your site after searching for “blue widgets”, they’re clearly looking for one of two things: a) They’re looking to buy blue widgets, or b) They’re looking for more information about blue widgets.

Adding functionality to the web site would mean to do some or all of the following:

• The first thing you need to do is make sure that you have a page for selling blue widgets (via a shopping cart system – if you’re not donig this yet, stop right now and get on it!), and a few pages about blue widgets. What do they do? Why are they better (or worse) than green widgets? Etcetera.
• Have a good navigation system. The functionality comes in when you provide links to all of these information pages from your sales page, AND from each other. Make the links stand out by putting them under a “Related information:” type header.
• Give your site visitors the chance to do a search for “blue widgets” from YOUR site. Give them the option of either searching just your site, or searching the web. More on Adding Search Functionality to Your Web Site.
• Allow your site visitors to share their stories about their experiences, or ask questions about blue widgets right on your site. This can best be achieved by either offering a “comments” section on your articles, or at the very least, asking for feedback and offering a contact form where they can submit their responses directly to you. Or both!
• Depending on your site’s back end, it can be very simple and easy to add photos in a unique way and further intrique and catch the interest of your site visitors. People want to see what they’re buying, and they want to see it in action. Create slideshows and not just thumbnails, and your visitors might just find themselves surfing your site’s other products just to see the pictures!
• Polls. Contests. Giveaways. Be it the color of your next big widget or just what else they’d like to see on the web site. People LOVE to give their input, as much as they love the chance to get something for free, so any way you can give them this opportunity, they’ll take it.
• Create a section of your site for “members only” access. Include “premium” articles, discount offers, and so on. This not only provides your users with a feeling of being important to you, but it also allows you to collect email addresses from people who are clearly interested in your company’s offerings, for sending newsletters or special announcements later on.
• Offer real time industry news feeds, live on your site. Again, people are coming to you seeking information – the more you give, the more they’ll remember you, and the higher the chance they’ll come back.

This list is by no means exhaustive. But the bottom line is that “brochure sites” are just a huge waste of time and resources these days. They bore people, and they don’t ever stand out to give the visitor any reason on Earth to remember you or come back. Gone are the days of simple one- or three-pages sites just to say “Hey, here we are.” Web sites like that have long fallen by the wayside, and have absolutely no hopes of ever coming back, thank goodness!