Click here and you’ll land on the website for Cates Family Farm. It’s not the fanciest website in the world. Some of the design elements are a bit dated – the repeating background image and the heavy outlines around the navigation box are pretty 1996, I think.
What interested me and my fellow students in the UWSBDC Web Strategy class is that the site doesn’t really get much fancier than that. It contains no Web 2.0 pet tricks. You can’t develop a user profile, upload an avatar and insert your opinions right into the middle of the Cates Family Dinner.
It just 1) shows what they sell (grass-fed beef) and 2) states their value proposition (it’s excellent and they deliver to your door) in a way that is appropriate for their business.
As a designer, I want to get in there and make it a more handsome site. For example, I’d get rid of the 16pt Times New Roman and replace it with a nice sans serif in gray.
Of course, that would lead to more changes, which would lead to more changes and before you know it – overdesign and huge bill. And the site would not work any better for their business than the one they have.
They’re farmers, not designers. Their site is working for them and it’s perfect for them.
Thanks, Sandra Bradley, Web Strategy guru, for this insight!
tags:intelligent design
