The Broadcast Mentality Continued

The Broadcast Mentality and Website Design

According to the broadcast mentality:

• Producers offer finished products to a mass audience, whose role as receivers is to accept or reject them.
• Every broadcast message is a form of mass marketing, and so must serve the broadcaster's established goals.
• The consumer's freedom is manifested through choice, by deciding which product to buy.

All of the broadcaster's experience in the marketplace makes these attributes of the broadcast relation between producers and consumers seem like the essential structure of the consumer economy. When digital technology arrives, therefore, the question that producers ask is: how can it be best implemented to facilitate the broadcast relation? Like television, direct marketing, or a retail store, the Internet is thus understood as a way to bring finished products to the attention of the mass public. And when the Internet is understood in this way, a few basic styles of website are the result:

• the advertising site;
• the marketing site;
• and the retail site.

The Advertising Site (Nike)

Following the pattern established by television, advertising websites seek to attract attention and to create an aura for the broadcaster and the product. Nike.com, for example, is elaborate, expensive, and essentially a television ad. It does not answer any questions, does not provide any service, and offers no activity for the user except identification with celebrity athletes. The company has a message to broadcast, and the audience's only function is to receive it. The Internet is thus understood as a broadcast medium, and the computer as a reception device. In other words, since this site is patterned after a television ad, it incorporates all the limitations of that medium, while ignoring the possibilities offered by the Internet.

Without altering the goal of this website - to attract attention - it would be vastly improved if it treated the user as a producer, rather than a receiver, of information. As a simple example, Nike could help users create a personalized exercise program. This would still advertise Nike products, but it would also acknowledge that people actually use them.

The Marketing Site (Tupperware, CompareNet)

At marketing sites, the consumer is understood as a customer who may have questions or problems and may require assistance in choosing a product. These websites therefore function like sales representatives rather than television ads. Tupperware.com, for example, boasts product descriptions, gift ideas, press releases, and a limited catalogue. But while the company is symbolized by the enthusiastic community of a Tupperware party, the website is unable to translate this community spirit into a useful design. The site provides considerable quantities of information, but from the user's perspective, the information is inert: there is no way for customers to act on it. For the company, this means the site is not a very astute salesman, since it can answer only very limited questions and lacks the ability to make a sale.

As with the advertising site, tupperware.com unthinkingly adopts the limitations of one-way mass communication. Yet here too, without changing the site's goal - to provide product information - Tupperware could greatly increase the value of its site by treating the consumer as a user. By hosting an online Tupperware party, and creating a database to answer specific questions, the company would provide responsive, rather than broadcast, information.

A marketing site like CompareNet offers a compelling example of responsive web design. Like a department store, this site places similar products side by side, helping the consumer evaluate their features, prices, and options. Thus, unlike the Tupperware and Nike sites, CompareNet acts as an information broker rather than a broadcaster. By allowing its users to compare the products of different manufacturers, CompareNet incorporates the role of knowledgeable salesman in its functionality. This makes the consumer more than just a receiver. Customers can now ask specific questions and the site can answer them: What other models are available? How do they differ? It should be obvious that functionality of this kind is a far more effective strategy on the web than marketing slogans.

The Retail Site (The Gap)

The most useful category of commercial website is the retail site or online store. But once again, the majority of online stores are designed to satisfy the broadcast mentality, rather than to exploit the way digital technology affects the relation between producers and consumers.

At the Gap's online store, consumers select from the same array of clothing available at physical Gap stores. But from the consumer's perspective, the Gap online does not differ at all from a mail-order catalogue. While the Gap's store employs some sophisticated functionality - including "Instant Style," a flip-book-like feature that lets users combine different tops and bottoms, and a zoom mode that allows users to examine selected items more closely - still, these features only hint at what might be possible if designers ceased reproducing broadcast era forms. While the Gap's online store may be convenient in some circumstances, it still embodies the broadcast relation between producers and consumers.

If the Gap thought of the web as a medium of communication, rather than as a broadcast medium, it might invite its users to suggest new clothing combinations, not simply receive the Gap's suggestions. Taken to its logical conclusion, this might involve a form of mass customization, where users could select customized styles, fabrics, cuts, and sizes. With a website that acted as a medium of communication, instant style might then mean more than matching compatible products. The site would no longer just broadcast what the manufacturer happens to produce. Instead, web-based functionality would assist the user in defining the specific products they want. A responsive, user-specific website like this operates on the scale of the individual user. Above all, it strikes a commercial compromise between producers and consumers impossible for the broadcast mentality to conceive.

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