Hamburgers and Responsive Website Design
A family member works for a large company that recently launched a new website. It looks impressive. Responsive design, motion graphics, video...it's all there. But it's destined to be a failure.
Responsive design has firmly latched onto the collective consciousness of the insurance community and why not? It looks 'clean' and has a certain visual drama courtesy of those big glossy images. Cool. But most of the responsive design websites we see cropping up across the insurance agency landscape are destined to fail as well.
Back to the family member for a moment. Let's just say he (or she) works for a company that delivers services to a highly regulated industry. Like a lot of highly regulated industries, technology updates are well behind the curve, and so in the office environments of the company's clients, computer operating systems are a few versions back, everyone is using IE browsers on display screens that are equivalent in size to tablet displays.
The company recognized the shift to mobile browsing and went with a responsive design to be sure their new website was mobile friendly. The cardinal sin committed here was not designing for the optimal experience of the actual end user, the clients and their work environment. Instead, design requirements were developed by canvassing team members and company stakeholders, not the actual users. If end users had been consulted, the company would have realized that client experience with a new website would be through an outdated desktop environment. Mobile only or mobile first responsive design wouldn't have been the starting point. But it was and things just aren't going to work out.
Numerous responsive designs have been available through Word Press and other platforms and insurance agencies have been adopting these designs at an increasing rate. Sometimes these sites will work out. But in many cases, money will be spent to update a design and website conversions will fall leading to a negative return on investment.
Responsive design in and of itself is not bad, Confluency uses it as well. However, responsive design, or any design that does not put the end user experience (UX) at the center of design goals, is bad and is doomed to be a failure. But don't take my word for it.
Two recent articles were published, based on a study by the Nielsen Noman Group, both quantify the 'badness' that is bound to result when UX isn't a consideration in website design. The first, 'Hamburger Menus and Hidden Navigation Hurt UX Metrics', shows how hidden menus frustrate website users and reduce website conversions. Too many insurance agency websites fall back on hamburger menus as a web page 'responds' to a smaller screen (like the desktop screens in those client offices where my family member works). And the evidence shows that the end user will only work so hard to find what they want.
The other article, 'Mobile First is NOT Mobile Only', delves into the study from another angle - the oversight or laziness that results in ineffective responsive website design...and hamburgers.
Hamburgers are an all-American food and many of us enjoy them from time-to-time. But hamburgers in the diet, in the wrong place or in the wrong quantities, can have health consequences. So can hamburgers in your insurance agency web design.