Engage!
by J.D. Shipengrover

• JD's four principles of site usability: If you want people to use your intranet site, it needs to be engaging.
• Doing it: To make a site engaging and entertaining, you need to have a good base design. Here are some tips for colors and graphics.
• Doing it in NetObjects Fusion: Fusion's SiteStyles make it easy for you to look good.
• Balance is the key: When you begin to venture into the realms of color and graphics it is easy to go into overkill. When you go too far, you lose your user, usually for good.

In my previous column , I offered a lot of ideas about how to find out what your users want, and I touched on my four principles of site usability:

1. Make it engaging.
2. Make it entertaining.
3. Make it easy to navigate.
4. Give 'em what they want.

In this column, I would like to look at how to make a site engaging and entertaining. On the surface, it may seem frivolous to make an intranet engaging and entertaining. But it isn't.

A lot of people think that simply getting the information up is enough. Well, an intranet is not a case of "build it and they will come." And an intranet's success relies heavily on people using it--especially if you are building an intranet intended to replace traditional channels of communication. Trust me here for a moment, they won't use it if it is boring, hard to use, or doesn't give them what they are looking for.

Engaging and entertaining

That being said, what do I mean by engaging and entertaining? Above, I listed them separately, but they are pretty closely related.

Engaging has a simple meaning here. It means, engage your users. Catch their attention. Make them stop and take notice. Now, this can be done many ways. I wouldn't recommend hitting them over the head with huge graphics, super contrasting colors, or explosions. I am not talking about movie-quality effects. Fortunately, Jerry Bruckheimer doesn't have to use your intranet.

Remember, it is usually the simplistic designs that grab our attention and please our senses. If you're using NetObjects Fusion, you have more than 200 professionally designed SiteStyles to choose from, and their pleasant sense of color and design will make any intranet feel more welcoming. To see these styles, click here.

Entertaining, unlike engaging, is a little more difficult to grasp. I don't mean give them games to play and music to listen to. I mean make it fun to use. An intranet should not try anyone's patience, it should be fun or, at the very least, painless.

I don't know, maybe I am strange, but I am happy when I go to a Web site with a question and come away with what I needed after very little effort on my part. Entertaining is simply a way to make people happy. I admit that of my four Principles of Usability, this is the least critical. It can be skipped if it has to be or thought of as a phase two project. I am open-minded here, I can admit that. But it is important.

Doing it

OK, put the two together, what do I really mean here? To make a site engaging and entertaining, you need to have a good base design. (This part is closely related to navigation, which I will discuss in my next column.) And good base design is founded on good use of color and graphics. This is essential, and that's it. (See, not so hard.)

Now, to have good use of color and graphics, you have to remember two things:

1. There are only 216 colors out there that all monitors and Web browser display without significantly changing the color. They are called the nondithering hues. Use them and only them. Use the colors off this scale and you will be unable to predict what your site colors will look like on different monitors, browsers, and color settings. (The issue of Web-safe color is much deeper than this, but this is the essence. To read Lynda Weinman's article on Web-safe color, click here.)
2. Graphics must be "Web ready." What does this mean? It means small, useful images that can display easily on the Web. Current standards are GIF and JPG file types, as well as PNG to some extent in the new browsers. Any graphics you use must download quickly. No more than 3 to 4 seconds for the majority of the page to load. If you have a few stragglers after that, it's OK, as long as the major message of the page is there within 4 to 5 seconds.
3. It is written, said, and studied that you have 8 seconds to grab users when they are using the Web. If your site takes longer than that to appear, you have lost them. Eight seconds doesn't sound like much, but when you are waiting for a Web page, it is an eternity. (Test yourself next time you are waiting for a page to load. When do you start to get annoyed?) To read more about Web graphics, click here.

Do it in NetObjects

NetObjects Fusion makes it really easy for you to have good base design. Fusion has something called SiteStyles--graphical and textual elements you can apply to your entire site. They are like templates, where the colors and the graphics are done for you and all you have to do is go in and put in your content.

You can use one to create the "look and feel" of your entire site, or you can select to use a SiteStyle on only certain pages, or you can use a SiteStyle but edit it to make it your own. NetObjects Fusion 4.0 offers more than 200 SiteStyles. One thing I really like about Fusion's SiteStyles is that they are easily customized. To see all of NetObjects Fusion's SiteStyles, click here.

It is important, especially when using predesigned styles, to remember to keep the design of the site true to your intranet's goals and tone. I encourage you to edit the SiteStyle to make it your own.These SiteStyles are there to help you, but if everyone used them without changing them, then the World Wide Web would be a boring place.

Six clicks to a custom look

The easiest way to change the look of a style is to change the font used on banners and buttons—this alone can customize an entire site in just six clicks. To do this, go into Site view, double click on a banner or button, then click on the button that says "Text Settings." Then, on the line that says "Font" click on the button that says "Set." Choose a font from the list. Click OK, OK, and voila! Your style can look like new.

Kill the urge for overkill

One final note here. Balance is the key. When you begin to venture into the realms of color and graphics, it is easy to go into overkill. When you go too far, you lose your user, usually for good. Overkill and cause the following problems:

1. There is too much going "on." Too much movement or too many contrasting colors and fonts and so on. This causes "information overload," which literally means there is too much going on for the user to process. So, instead of staying and trying to figure out what the site is doing and how to use it, the user will bail—leave. And you lose a user for good. Rarely do they come back to try again. Users are fickle, even if this is an intranet; you may have the tendency to think of your user as a captive audience who has to use the site. Nope. You lose them and they won't come back, and if they do, they won't have a very good attitude about it.
2. Navigation and structure is lost. With too many colors or graphics (especially moving ones), the structure of your site can be hard to determine. If the eye is continually drawn to the wrong area and a user has to focus on your navigation, then you have lost the navigational structure of your site and it will be deemed hard to use. (This could be more a subconscious effect, but nonetheless not one you want to cause.)
3. Site takes too long to load. This is a classic. I have mentioned this before and I am sure I will mention this again. If your site takes too long to download into the browser, the user will not wait and will not come back either. Humans are impatient beings for the most part, and as Web designers, we just have to live with that. I don't care if your site explains the meaning of life and cures cancer; users won't wait for it.
4. Site is too advanced for the browser and therefore doesn't work or even load at all. This is not such a large issue when dealing with intranets. Normally, intranet developers have the luxury of knowing what types of computers and browsers their users will have, but it can't hurt to bring up the issue.
5. If you put too many advanced features on your site, such as fancy JavaScript and Java applets, the site will not load for a user with an older browser (say a browser back in the 2.0 generations of Internet Explorer and Netscape). Just be aware of this issue. There are technical things you can do to get around this, and we can talk about that at a later date.

About the author

JD Shipengrover has been in the Intranet developing business for over four years, including building a worldwide Intranet for CompuServe Inc.'s Customer Services department, (A project on such a large scale it took 2 years to complete!) Currently, she consults at BMW Financial Services, designing several Intranets for their dealer networks. She also teaches Web Site Design at a Columbus State Community College and has a BA in Journalism.

Illustration: Metropolis by Rob Porazinski from www.artville.com