Lasers, Mirrors, and Egyptions
Cool post title right?
Most websites miss the point when it comes to displaying information that their visitors actually care about. Recently I was searching for some dog kennel software and was amazed that only 70%ish of the companies I found failed to display a single screenshot of their product on their website. 100% failed to put a screenshot of their product on their most visited page, the homepage. There was one thing 100% of them did though; fill entire pages with boiler plate marketing verbiage that I didn’t care about.
There is some overwhelming need to fill websites with nonsense marketing trivialities. As soon as business types see a blank webpage with lorem ipsum in it they get all purple in the face trying to come up with as many platitudes about their product or services as they can. ”Revolutionary”, “Optimized”, “Synergy!”, bleh.
Marketing people and graphic designers are no better. Make some text bigger, tilt it 20 degrees, now your selling a product! Lets spent 90% of our time making pretty things instead of giving the customer what they want to see.
Now when I think Lasers + Mirrors + Egyptians I think of a good time, or Stargate, but mainly a good time. When I hear those three words together I want to see the lasers in action, bouncing off of something, and maybe some cool pyramids or dog headed warriors or something. If these words described a board game I’d be all for checking out this thing in action. Lasers bouncing off of mirrors and hitting Egyptians ( not the people of course )? Nice!
Its to bad Khet doesn’t think the same way I do. Instead of putting a video on their homepage of their laser, mirror, Egyptian product your instead treated with more of the boilerplate nonsense thats just so common these days. Oh yeah, look, flashy Flash things, animated bs some graphic designer thought was the bees knees.
There is a tournament! – But thats not lasers and mirrors.
Mensa! – No mirrors and lasers.
Product box rotated in 3D space with a hover glow! - Sigh.
Its one thing for kennel management software to be a little uncomfortable with their application, ( everybody is sick of winforms grey right? ) but its shameful for a company with such an awesome game concept to be just as afraid. C’mon guys, show me the product, show me the lasors, make me care about what it is you do!
Sometimes I think websites that offer an interactive service or product should simply put three things on their website. A logo, a phone number or link to purchase, and a big video of the thing in action. Thats it, nothing more or nothing less.
Don’t be dumb like Khet and fill your websites with useless business banter and irrelevant badges or cute 3d perspective cruft. Fill it with what people care about. Fill it with what the hesitant strategy and board game lover wants to see. I am not impressed with your flashy logo or animated hieroglyphics but I would be impressed watching the intricate mechanics of a game that combines chess and light reflection in action.