New Survey Shows Customers Prefer to Spend Their Money at Simple Websites

Added: (Sat Jul 10 2010)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Based on consumers surveyed who were searching for dehumidifier reviews, Johnson Internet Media has come to the conclusion that customers are looking for simplistic websites over complicated websites. According to spokesperson Jessie, the wife of the CEO, “After 2 failed website implementations, it is now clear that consumers looking for dehumidifier reviews actually prefer plain HTML to complicated coding such as Flash, JSP, PHP, or .NET. We even found that customers prefer the straight HTML page over a Wordpress driven site.” This is especially good news for companies that are just starting out with a web page as it is much easier to find a web developer that knows HTML than a web developer that knows Flash.

Another major problem that complicated website programming languages can cause is that many of the latest features are not supported in all browsers. One of the customers surveyed preferred to use the Google Chrome web browser over the standard Internet Explorer that comes with every Windows system. Their main concern with complicated web sites is that they are going to be getting a different experience than those using Internet Explorer because websites often become jumbled together in Google Chrome because it does not interpret web pages the same way that Internet Explorer does. The web admin for Johnson Internet Media simplifies this complicated process by stating, “Pure HTML can be read by any browser developed since the early 1990s. However, the latest web-based programming languages such as AJAX, JSP, .NET, and PHP are not all read the same way by every internet browser. In addition, the CSS that determines the layout of most modern web pages is not read the same way by all browsers. This is why an ultra-simplified website is so beneficial. Each person that views the website is seeing the content the way the developer intended regardless of the browser that they are using.”

Survey participants also expressed their concern for over-complicated websites that become “too busy” when looking at them. They preferred the more neutral colored template and less dominating graphics when shown the three website templates that Johnson Internet Media had used over the past 8 months. After the customers responded, the spokesperson Jennie stated, “We asked the customers what they wanted, and they preferred the template that was the most simplistic. Honestly, the simplicity of the template means that we put the least amount of time into it. We recommend to our web-based partners that they take the same simple approach to save themselves time and money on costly web development.”

Consumers also clearly expressed that an overly complicated website also made the advertisements on the page appear to be spam. When using a more simple design, they felt that the advertisements were less overbearing and it made their overall experience better. In the future, Johnson Internet Media plans on decreasing the size and placement of the advertisements to help meet the customer’s expectations of even more simplicity. The Johnson Internet Media Web Developer stated, “Everyone knows advertisement distract from the look and feel of the web page itself. However they are a necessary evil so that web sites can get the revenue they need to cover their expenses. My job is to make the advertisements have the least impact on the customers as possible. We try to integrate the advertisements into an incredibly simplistic template where they almost appear to be part of the website itself.”

Perhaps this survey indicates a trend of websites that will start listening to the customers’ wants and needs and start a minimalistic trend when it comes to web design. After all, there are major corporations out there that have kept their website’s simple design since they launched. For instance, think of Google’s introduction page which has an incredibly minimalistic look and feel. With the amount of market research that these companies have performed, it only further indicates that consumers really are looking for something simple and easy to use. With simplicity also usually comes ease of use and this is exactly what users of the dehumidifier reviews website were looking for. The survey indicated that they just wanted to read the review and then be lead to a website with the cheapest prices if they felt the product was acceptable to their standards.

After switching to the new simple layout, Johnson Internet Media found that traffic increased by almost 300% and their total company’s revenue increased by a whopping 15%. Although the company has only been around for about a year, a 15% increase off of a change in one website was quite surprising to the representatives at Johnson Internet Media. They also expressed their intentions of running similar surveys for some of their other product lines. Jessie stated that, “Online surveys often tend to be unreliable, but in our case it really worked. We look forward to running additional market analysis in other lines of business.”

As a final statement by the CEO, James Johnson, “Although this may not work in every industry, we found that a simple look and feel gives our customers an easy to use experience when reading our reviews. Our customers told us that they wanted a simple website, and our site dedicated to dehumidifier ratings gives them just what they were asking for.