On Homepage Design and Pleasing Everyone

The Universal Truth: No matter what you do, you can never please everyone.

With us, at Mapsofworld.com, this line is our decision-making mantra. We know we can’t please all our stakeholders when it comes to homepage design. So, the next best is to make your homepage to please that stakeholder community, which feeds you and which is your raison d’etre.

When we had just got going that we would exist for our actual users’ expectations, then that is what our brief was to our first design team. Between 2004 January, when we started and till date we have done six complete makeovers and quite a few major tinkering with the design elements. It is a kind of a never- ending process, a journey to a user’s complete satisfaction and that too, when user’s preferences and expectations are an undefined variable. But the quest continues and each attempt is evaluated for its effectiveness.

The current homepage design of Mapsofworld.com is 100% around what our user wants to see and get. Most people come to our homepage looking for a world map. We went ahead and put as large a map of the world as possible on our homepage. Of course, purists cried it was Hara-kiri. Agreed, purists are important but they are not a significant stakeholder in Mapsofworld’s scheme of things. So out you go purists and welcome radical user-friendly changes! Our designers, on the basis of their research, wanted users to first see our big and beautiful world map and that is all we were going to serve.

Having done that, we hit a roadblock. Our users wanted us to make our map clickable to the next level of maps – 190 clickable components on one image! Are you kidding? Yes, we are. Of course, our largest user base comprises kids and teenagers. Get it?

Having achieved what was termed insane and impossible, we started from what our users came to us for and thus we also looked at our message. Our message of Mapsofworld.com being  ‘Current, Credible and Consistent’ had to take a centerstage, and hence it comes bang on the top, next to our logo. It declares our intent and commits us to making those three words happen 24×7.

Early on in design we wanted to disclose that we have a presence in seven other languages than English and this feature had to come up. These are simple things but each team looks at it as an opportunity. The SEO team would like you to work one way and the UI/UX team the other. In all these conflicts, we had to set the bar very high. We ruled that when in conflict, the UI/UX team would take the final call. Yes, it was a tough call, as UI would embed content and SEO would like it to be all visually seen. At the end of the day, in Mapsofworld, many such content elements are embedded.

Mapsofworld.com, as a portal, has several revenue channels. Each business division wanted its share of the pie. The homepage is the prime property and accommodating everyone multiple times is an impossible necessity. The Ad-sales division would like to give only sub-premium inventory to other divisions and other divisions would like to settle for nothing else than above-the-fold premium inventory. This fight gave UI/UX team nightmares. Innovation was the only way out and that saved the day. The US sales team got their number on the first row. The project team got their mail id while the digital map product sales team got prime inventory just below the world map image. Phew!

Over 400 links, each negotiated, each fought. And can you imagine, the war is starting again. Mapsofworld.com is working on a new homepage design. If all stakeholders give their go ahead, the new page design should go live before April 15. Time for me to go to the Himalayas for some meditation.