Aim for wow

Glaser drew the most copied logo of the twentieth century with four characters and a heart. The wow was not in the effects. It was in the idea, given enough silence around it to be heard.

On the web, wow gets misread as motion: particles, parallax, things that follow the cursor. We use some of those tools on our own site, so this is not a sermon against them. But they are seasoning. A page with ten garnishes and no meal leaves people hungry and slightly annoyed.

The wow that converts is different: a headline that says the thing the visitor was already thinking. A price published where everyone hides it. A page that loads before doubt sets in. Yes is a rational response; wow is when something exceeds what the visitor believed this kind of website could be.

So we budget for one bold move per page, and we spend the rest of the effort making everything around it quiet, fast and sure. One wow, well fed, beats five fighting for attention.