Templated experiences
Web sites are getting cleaner and easier to navigate. That’s good. But they are also getting more and more templated, making user experience’s more uniform across sites. Take a look at these screenshots - 1800flowers and Proflowers – Dell and Gateway – MSN and Yahoo. Even Saks Fifth Avenue and Crate and Barrel look alike, even though they are not competitors.
Top 5 reasons for this happening:
1 - The amazon.com syndrome. Everyone wants to be an Amazon. Same cool ideas same dumb mistakes.
2 - Fear of the competitor. How much time are we spending looking at our competitors’ site? Again, same cool ideas, same…
3 - Risk adversity. We don’t want to take any risks, no funky homepage or innovative product presentation.
4 - Best practices. We hired a consultant who told us that checkouts should be 3 steps. And 3 steps it is.
5 - Resources. It’s easy and cheaper to maintain a templated site. No money for innovation.
…And there are probably 15 other reasons.
By making sites undifferentiated, online businesses are making pricing become the determining factor. If my user experience at Proflowers is identical to my experience at 1-800-Flowers then price is all that is left to convert the undecided buyer.
I have no data to support what I’m saying, but I think there is much to be gained if sites claimed their right to be different — and executed on it.
