Publication Date: July 15, 1996

Putting on the Glitz

By Ken Shulman

In any human pursuit, there is a point where man is undone by his inventions. Whether it be the weekend warrior who buys a top-of-the-line mountain bike to ride on flat city streets, or the computer dilettante who loads Quicken onto his PC to handle the astonishing volume of three checks a month, human beings have always demonstrated a propensity to be ruled by their tools and toys.

Perhaps nowhere is this tendency more evident than on the Internet. Page designers often rush to experiment with the newest technologies instead of asking which of these technologies might best suit the needs of their clients. Companies large and small fall prey to the pleasures of the medium, investing in costly multimedia and bandwidth-hogging graphics before assessing whether these features will boost their visibility and revenues, or whether the markets they are trying to reach have the equipment and capability to receive them. It's easy for even the most seasoned professional to give Web prowess precedence over his business plan.

"I believe in a 'crawl before you walk' approach," says Greg Bean, president of Cybergroup of Baltimore, Md. "People tend to become fascinated by things like animation before they have considered a practical application. In all of my consulting work, I have encountered only one situation where animation was truly effective. What people most want when they visit a web site is educational content. They want to learn as much as they can about a certain situation or product, so they can make their own decisions. As far as I'm concerned, graphics belong in the Smithsonian."

"The sense I get is that after a very short while, people find the multimedia and animation activities time consuming and intrusive," says Boston-based consultant Daniel Dern. "You have to consider that a lot of people have neither the hardware nor the software to handle these sorts of things. A web site planner should know that when he puts in 100kb of graphics, he's not increasing the gee-whiz factor. Instead, he is aggravating the gee-I'm-still-waiting factor."

Learning to Compromise

As in all activities, the secret to effective communication on the Web seems to lie in a healthy compromise between wizardry and wisdom. Eye-catching graphics and innovative animation can attract the attention of idle browsers and expert surfers. But there is no definitive proof that these features will induce users to return, particularly users with sluggish modems and limited time or patience.

"When developing a Web site, you have to evaluate your potential market," says Steve Mann, director of product strategy at Computer Associates in Islandia, N.Y. "According to the Nielsen numbers, approximately 60 percent of the people who use the Web are male, professional, and on the upper rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. These people probably have adequate equipment and access to high-speed lines. So if that is your market, I'd say go for it. But if you want to reach a consumer base, a group of people operating out of their homes, you have to figure out a way to deliver attractive, appealing sites that don't take a year and a half to load."

"There are definitely smart ways to employ graphics and animation that aren't all that huge, by using compression, or proper syntax," says Paul Tyma, president of Preemptive Solutions in Syracuse, N.Y. "And keeping bandwidth down is always a good idea. I've also found that Internet users are even more alarmed by irregularity than they are by slow loading times. If a page takes five seconds to come down the first time and one minute the second, they complain. What Web users most want is consistency."

Still, there are those who believe that technological exploration is not only fun but fruitful, and that it leads to discoveries and applications that benefit the entire Internet community. "In business, you want to give your employees the greatest capability to work with their colleagues, partners, and other vendors," says Alan Holzman, strategic technology manager of the Internet and Communications Group at Intel Corp. "I don't believe you're going to get a lot of eyeballs to your site unless you take advantage of everything that is available. People using features like Java, ActiveX, Real Audio are taking advantage of the Web's multimedia and interactive capabilities. Sure they will shrink the volume of people who can get to the site. But they will attract those people whom they most want to reach."

Making Use of the Arsenal

There are those, like Holzman, who believe that the implementation of new technology also has an enormous effect on the corporate bottom line, and they strive to animate their sites with all of the firepower in their arsenals. "The Web page is just like a magazine," he says. "You don't want people to pick it up once and put it down. You want them to buy a subscription, to keep coming back. In this age, a person's attention span has been significantly reduced. If you don't get him hooked immediately, you stand the chance of losing him. And if you don't keep your page updated, both in terms of content and technology, you will lose him later on. Certainly this is an arduous task. But it is absolutely necessary."

With the rapid evolution of interactive features that allow the exchange of applications over the Internet, the cyber-community stands the risk of being divided along lines of wealth, interest and technical expertise. The interactive potential offered by Java and similar products, such as VRML or Microsoft's ActiveX , will reside, at least initially, in the domain of the Internet elite, employed and developed by those users with sufficient hardware, software and experience to deploy them. The question remains whether these exciting innovations will trickle down from the Internet haves to the Internet have-nots, and how long this transfer will take.

"It is a question of inducement," concludes Holzman, a strong proponent of product and technological innovation. "In the computer game industry, there are plenty of games still around that are quite enjoyable and that don't require a Pentium chip. But over and over again people have demonstrated a willingness to spend to get to the higher level. It's the same with these latest-breaking applications. You give people the choice, between the stuff they already have and this really cool stuff that has just come out. And you invite them to acquire the equipment necessary to enjoy it."

Ken Shulman writes from Cambridge, Mass.

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