In his book, Memoirs, David Brinkley tells several stories about
the beginnings of television news. One of the most fascinating to me was the story of the
upside-down sheep. It seems that the Washington station at which Brinkley was working
had a man assigned to go about the city during the day with a movie camera. His job was to
find interesting things to film that would appear on the evening news.
Bits of the film taken during the day were spliced together by a crew who then showed
it on command during the evening news show. The commentator, Brinkley, was in the studio
and told the audience that the pictures were coming but had never seen the pictures
himself before they appeared on the air. It was Brinkley's job to comment on the pictures
as they rolled by.
On one particular night the film, quite by accident, was threaded into the projector
backward. So there, on the screen, awaiting commentary was a marvelous movie of a sheep,
upside down. To make matters worse, there was music playing to accompany the film. But the
music was chosen based on the film at the other end of the reel. So the upside-down sheep
flickered across TV screens accompanied by funeral music.
So what does the sheep have to do with us? It seems to me like the upside-down sheep is
a metaphor for a lot of the things going on on the World Wide Web today. Just as the TV
news commentators on the 1950's were breaking new ground, so are we. Just as they had to
cobble together bits and pieces of technology to make things work, so do we. Just the
result was often somewhat different than expected, so it is today.
The problem with today's upside-down sheep on the Web is that everybody pretends not to
notice them. In Brinkley's case, the sheep led to all kinds of comments from colleagues
and plain ole folks in the street. But in the case of upside-down sheep Web pages, people
pretend not to notice.
It's somewhat like the stories that are told about the early part of W.W.II when
Germany was invading Russia. Stalin was in charge at that time and quite a fearsome
fellow. He had the nasty habit of, quite literally, killing the messengers who brought bad
news.
The predictable result was that the bad news of the German invasion was something that
lacked competition to see who would be the messenger.
The result of that, was that it was two weeks before Stalin found out that the Germans
had invaded his country. That, too, happens a lot today relative to Web sites.
Here's pretty much how I see the problem taking shape.
To begin with, companies decide that they want to go on the World Wide Web for reasons
that have nothing to do with their business purpose. The decide to be there because their
competition has a Web site. Or they decide to be there because they've heard it's a good
thing to do. Or because they don't want to get left behind. Or because the CEO's golfing
buddy's company has a Web page.
None of these are good business purposes. Just like with any other business function,
what you need to do is decide why you're going to take an action and then determine
whether the benefits and the costs line up in ways that will work for you. But that
doesn't happen in a lot of corporate cases.
The next thing that happens is that the folks in charge of the company, most of whom
have never surfed the Web in their life, cast about for people to do the Web site job for
them. And, most often in large corporations, they settle on their advertising agency.
After all, this is a form of advertising, isn't it? And, after all, they know these ad
guys are real creative, aren't they? Some of them actually have long hair. And, really,
how different can it be from the advertising they already do?
Alas, the answer to the last question is quite a bit. The ad agency people, unwilling
to turn down money, set out to build a Web page. And, quite often, they give the job of
doing that to people who are graphic artists.
Now I have nothing against graphic artists. Graphic artists are necessary to get
business messages across. And good, effective artwork that meets a business objective is
rare and the people who produce it are rare talents, worth their weight in a variety of
precious stones.
But most graphic artists that work in business today made their reputations, got their
rewards, and have their experience doing the kinds of graphics that work well in print or
on TV. In those media it's important to have a powerful graphic that will stop the reader
or the viewer and get him or her to pay attention.
There are two reasons why that doesn't work on the Web.
The first is that on the Web you don't use graphics to stop people as they go by. Most
folks who show up at your Web site show up there because they are looking for you, or
because they are looking for a solution to a problem or for an opportunity to seize. You
don't need to stop them and hold them with a great big graphic. They're already there,
stopped, and held and waiting for information.
The other reason that those graphics from print and TV don't work on the Web is that
they are big, dense graphics. On the Web, the size of the files that the browser has to
load makes a difference in how long it takes for the entire Web page to show up. If people
don't know that there's lots of value on the page for them, they're simply not going to
wait for your super-fancy graphic to show up in front of their screen.
What they'll do, instead, is hit the stop button and move on. OOPS. That's why so many
huge companies spend huge amounts of money on pages that are practically worthless because
nobody ever looks at them.
The problem doesn't end there. We're back to Stalin syndrome and the upside-down sheep.
First of all, the approval process that our basic corporate executives go though is the
same one that they use with other advertising stuff. Someone shows them a static display
of art. They say, "Wow! That's good!" or, "Hmmm here's what I'd like to
change..."
In other words they're looking at the ad as if it appeared on television or in print,
not as it will appear on the Web. And because they haven't surfed the Web themselves, they
haven't got a clue as to the impact of a huge graphic.
As a small aside, most of these folks are also in love with their logos. That gives you
what I call "logocentric" sites. General Electric, for example, has one Web site
that shows up on my page with a GE logo so big that it won't fit on a single screen of my
browser.
OK, so they go through the approval process and they put the page up. Now we come to
the issue of why the upside-down sheep is not brought to our corporate-Stalin's attention.
Who's going to tell the local, corporate Stalin-equivalent?
The advertising agency isn't going to tell him. They think they did great work, and
besides if they tell him they might not get paid. The Stalin, him or herself isn't going
to find out because they aren't going on the Web checking things out. Corporate folk
somewhat lower on the food chain are not likely to tell the boss that the company has just
dumped a ton of money into something that's awful, because corporate careers are simply
not built that way.
Well, won't they find out from all of those measuring companies and so forth? Nope.
Page users aren't going to tell you because they're not going to wait for your page to
load, and the page measuring companies are counting the number of folks who show up, where
they're from and so forth and generally not looking at how long they spend on the site or
how many different pages they look at.
What's the result? A whole bunch of Web equivalents of upside-down sheep.
How do you keep from having upside-down sheep? First off, if you're an executive, get
some experience on the Web. You probably have a personal computer at home by now and you
can take a look at the Web without feeling that you're going to be embarrassed by anyone
except your kids. It actually might help your parental relations if you ask your kids to
help you surf the Web just a bit. If you get the experience of what it's like to go to Web
sites and try to use the information there, you'll be in a much better position to know
what to ask for when your company sets up a Web site.
If you're already familiar with web surfing, analyze how you act when you're out there.
How do you go searching? How long do you wait for a new page to load? What frustrates you
and what makes you glad?
Next, make sure if you do set up a Web project that you have specific business
objectives. Know why you want to set up a Web site and set objectives that you can measure
the results of down the road.
When you go to do your Web site design, try to use people who are familiar with the
World Wide Web and how it works. If you've got great graphic artists in your company, make
sure they find out what makes a great Web page before they start designing for you. Part
of that should be your requirement that they surf the Web themselves.
I've worked with graphic artists for companies where we've had them surf the Web and
have stood behind their chairs watching as they did so. Every time they hit the stop
button I'd say, "why did you just do that?" The answer usually is "I didn't
want to wait any longer", and after a few of these the point is usually well made.
These are bright folks who want to do good work. The problems with their designs stem from
the fact that they've been rewarded for a different kind of design for their whole career.
Finally, when you get your site up, make sure you've got good ways to measure its
effectiveness. Part of that ties back to your objectives. Part of it is seeking out
devices that work to measure the number of qualified people actually visiting your site.
Part of it is getting online yourself and checking the thing out.
One of my favorite American philosophers, Homer Simpson, has said, "Huh, it's
funny because it's not me." That's true of upside-down sheep. There are bound to be a
number of upside-down sheep on the Web, but if you pay attention to how your company
builds a Web site, one of those sheep won't be yours.
Created: 1998
Reviewed: 2/15/03
Some things have changed a great deal since I wrote this. Graphic artists have learned about the Web and many have mastered the techniques of Web site design. It's now much easier to find a designer who is competent with the technical stuff and can also produce a pleasing look. Sandy Rowley, who designed this site, is one of them.
Alas, it's still true that many in the ad business and in business in general still apply the standards of print design to Web sites. This is just as big an error in 2003 as it was five years ago. Remember the test of a site is how it works. Looks are part of that, but functionality is still the key.
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