The Tendo View

It looks like spring is finally hitting Northern California. Grass is growing, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and my son is now 14 months old—all around us, things are changing after a long, wet winter (and early April!).

At Tendo, we’re gearing up for some changes of our own: We’re starting the process of redesigning our site to better reflect our services and get folks more quickly to the content they need. The first part of that process is research—how do other sites attract and engage their audiences?

The combination of increased bandwidth, advances in technology, Internet on mobile devices, and short attention spans has turned the Web into a primarily visual medium. We’re exploring how to take advantage of that visual impact to achieve our goals.

Below are just a few of the sites we’ve looked at—some are pretty great and some, not so much. But all offer an interesting and different visual approach for how to quickly engage your target audience.

Earl & Thompson: I really like the tree graphic (at right) and its simple leaves/thought bubbles that describe very real challenges, opportunities, and concepts to its target audience.

Leo Burnett: If our collective post-“Avatar” existence has you thinking that 2-D is sooooo 2009, Leo Burnett’s 3-D visual navigation will tickle your (blue) toes. It’s not better or more intuitive to use than Earl & Thompson’s tree device, but it does create a modern, hip vibe for the Leo Burnett site—or at least it was designed to make you think so.

Grey Group:  While still constrained to the second dimension, Grey Group enlisted animated space ambassadors (think Microsoft’s Clippy™ meets space-age Teletubbies™) to help augment the navigation and funnel user experience. Does it work? Not really. Sure, they’re cute, clever, and likeable enough, but as annoying as he is, even Clippy has a handy tip from to time. These guys, on the other hand, don’t really guide users to content any faster or easier, so it’s hard to see them as a value-add.

Y&R: The interesting left brain/right brain split provides a good indication about how the agency sees their clients: “I’m a left-brainer, so I’m going to click here and see what Y&R has before I fire off an RFP for my next packaged-foods launch campaign…”

These sites are just the tip of the iceberg. And as we continue to evaluate and discuss different visual approaches to user experience, a couple of things have been reinforced: There is no single best way to grab users’ attention, but once you attract them, you need to make sure that you keep them by delivering  relevant information and compelling content behind the slick visuals.

After all, isn’t that why they came in the first place?