Welcome to our site

This question recently came up in a conversation about a credit union website. So my simple question, in reply, is this:

What if instead of looking for zany animations, a website that plays rock music, or any other of the latest hippest coolest fads…what if the “wow factor” was that your credit union’s site was accessible and easy to use?

If you’re designing a site, or managing the process, ask yourself why your users are coming to your site. Make that experience as close to perfection as possible. Businesses who pay a mind to solid user-experience – scannable content, attractive design that looks consistent across browsers, simple navigation, copywriting that sounds like a human – these are the Wow Factor.

And here’s another question that tends to come up in tandem with the former: “What do young people want in a web site?” As a young person, I can say this: We are impatient. We want what we want, and we want it now. We do not want to have to wade through all the fluff that you think is “neat” to get to the bottomline.

I hereby rename the traditional “Wow Factor” the “Neat Factor.” Because that’s what happens, users will say “oh that’s neat,” and then go back to wanting your site to just work right, please.

Man! It’s been a while since we’ve updated the blog. I admittedly felt very sheepish when Trey and I were speaking in Pittsburgh yesterday and we said, “Don’t let your blog go over two or three weeks without updating.” It’s entirely too easy to be cognitively aware of an ideal, while at the same time being passively content with not hitting that ideal. Sometimes blogging and staying connected on a million social media sites can be a real energy-sucker.

But you know what? It’s completely worth it. This weekend is the perfect example of why.

I’m sitting in Seattle’s SeaTac airport waiting for Trey and Brandon to arrive. We’re here for BarCampBankSeattle. This is going to be a weekend of talking ideas with some of the most innovative people working in finance today. A good many of them are folks we’ve had relationships with over the past year, or longer, but have never met in person. One of my ongoing aspirations is to be the dumbest person in the room at any given time, and this weekend I can put a big fat gold star next to that goal.

This weekend, I plan on:

• Calling William Azaroff “The Waz” in person, and watching him flip me the bird
• Comparing Jason Knight to his caricature in American Way magazine
• Watching Tim McAlpine juggle something. And asking that he please co-present with his son at The Symposium
• Finally shaking hands with Robbie Wright
• Buying Jesse Robbins a drink or two before he presents
• Hanging out with Brad Garland and Mark McSpadden. Because although we all live in Dallas, we have to fly to Seattle to see each other.
• Investigating how Jim Bruene knows so much about everything
• Crossing my fingers that Shari Storm doesn’t go into labor in the middle of a roundtable discussion

I’m jazzed.

ps: The weekend was almost smarter – This morning I’d planned on hanging with Hee-Haw Marketer Paul McEnany and the rest of Dallas’ Likemind, but my idiot evil car blew up and I ended up at the Honda Service Center instead. Likemind is a group of marketers, bloggers, and social-media-ites who get together every month or so and caffeinated themselves. Next time.