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ing. Jeroen van Sluijs Software Engineer |
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| Jeroen is a Software Engineer at Ibuildings Vlissingen. In his role as an analyst he makes functional and technical designs in close cooperation with the customer. Besides programming himself, he guides other developers during projects as a lead developer. |
Thursday, 27 March 2008Less is more
A couple of general rules for programmers are: do not put too much code in one function and use a name that covers the content of it. If you still have a lot of code, try to split it up in different functions and move specific low level code to separate files. And remember: a good programmer doesn't hesitate to throw away superfluous code.
Too much information However, the Less is More rule does not only apply to programmers and their code. Right after posting this blog, a colleague asked: Regularly, I receive blogs and links of sites where useful or interesting information can be found. In some cases the core of the matter is explained in only a couple of paragraphs, but more often a lot of background-information is given before the problem and solution is actually described. If I cannot find the important parts in such a long piece of text rapidly, I tend to skip the complete article or maybe just scan it quickly. In that case I rather spend my time on something else.
If the article would have been written shorter and more concisely, or the author would have used clear headers for each paragraph, I probably would have read it. Read more >> By coincidence, a colleague mentioned exactly the same this week. After receiving another blog about the same subject, he didn't read it, but just scanned the blog. In the end, the information was not clearly understood. When users get too much information (or too much at once), it is known that there's a big chance they just skip it. If you write a long blog, or when you have a lot of information on one page, try to present the information like it is generally done on several news sites: a clear heading that covers the content and the complete story in about 10-20 lines. If you're curious or want to read more, you have the possibility to read more. Just like good programmers do with their code. Forms This also applies to forms you have to fill in when you want to sign up for an account, or want to ask a question. More than often a lot more questions are asked than just the required ones: First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, ZIP, City, Country, Age, Gender, Interests, Operating System, Education, Graduation Year, ... pfff. By only seeing these questions, a lot of users will leave without taking any action, even if you're not obliged to fill in the answers. But let's pretend your user didn't leave your site and a lot of these questions are obligatory. I guess users often answer these questions, but with fake information to achieve their goal more quickly (I'm guilty of that too). Shouldn't it be enough to just fill in your email-address and your question (and maybe subject for internal processing)? If you are really interested in this information for research-purposes, it is better to hide these fields behind some kind of 'Would you like to supply some extra information?' link. Short and simple I think a lot of users simply like to read what a story comes down to and then decide to read further (or not) and just want to efficiently create an account or ask a question. This rule applies in lots of other cases as well (a customer can easily be satisfied with the less fancy solution, which costs even less time to build), but let's not go there: less is more  Share         Reacties
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Great post Jeroen!
I am a big fan of less is more but... I don't think your example with forms is the right way to do it. If you hide all the fields behind a 'Would you like to supply more information?' the user has no incentives whatsoever to supply that information though it can be very helpful for marketing purposes. There was an interesting blog about this on alistapart: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/signupforms. I'm a fan of phasing the supplying of information, for instance if you need to register just so the system knows it is talking to a single person then all you should enter would be your email adres (which should be unique on it's own). Then when you want to do something more substantial, you either require or request more information from/about the user, depending on how important the users data is to your marketing purposes.
Hello Jeroen,
as less is more in coding, the same principle isn't true in marketing. The more information you can gather the more powerful you can respond to the user. But for everything there is a place and a time. I hate the obligated forms when you just want to download a trial version. I will almost always put bogus information in it. Some companies have understood this process and just provide a "skip, and just take me to the download" link. If you want to sell a trial , make it as easy as possible. When your program is any good, the user will automatically give you all information when he becomes a buyer. What marketeers should learn that the end user is more than willing to provide info when the info is relevant to the thing the info is required for.
I agree with you from the downloaders' point of view; however, from the marketeers point of view, every time you get the address of a downloader, you have a lead that you can pursue. The conversion rate is much higher if you collect that data, even if some people choose to enter bogus.
I think it's reasonable to ask for some information in exchange for a free product; it has become more or less common practice. Note that everytime someone enters a drawing to win '5 minutes of free shopping' etc. is essentially the same theory. People are glad to give away their personal information in exchange for just the slightest chance of winning something. |
