Market relevance:

Take a look at the promotional materials of almost any marketing-focused agency and you're sure to find the words 'stand-out' in there somewhere.

Brand stand-out has been one of the buzzwords of the design industry for years, and is now well understood by clients. Everyone wants their brand to be the one that is different, the one that everyone remembers, the one that stands out from the crowd.

Online, there is another, more difficult, task that is often overlooked: helping organisations understand how to 'fit in'.

In every category of communications apart from the internet, brand stand out is achieved by varying well established formats and approaches by a relatively small amount. Varying this format too much, in an attempt to be more attractive to consumers, has the opposite effect: consumers have to re-learn the basic rules before they can take in the information they want. A magazine with its contents and highlights in the centre pages is certainly different, but unlikely to succeed. Many have tried similar tactics: only those appealing to tiny, specialist niche markets have succeeded.

Imagine a TV station where the picture was always broadcast in a circle. It's a great 'stand-out' idea: innovative, unique, and certainly memorable. No-one would forget it, but would it succeed? Probably not – it would be too far from the standards that the average TV viewer is comfortable with.

In some areas, like annual reports, there are legislative standards that determine what needs to be included, yet there is still an enormous disparity between a great annual report and a poor one, even if they share an identical pagination. Here, due to the effect that any misunderstanding could have on an individual's finances, standards have been imposed.

In other areas consistent behaviour or characteristics have evolved: many products and services share consistent approaches: standards help 'consumers' to understand how to judge one product against another. More than this, they give them the confidence to buy: there is a reassurance in driving the new Ferrari with controls in the same place as the old Skoda.

Standard practices are an essential part of the process of consolidation in any marketplace, and in particular to the acceptance of new media channels. Without some common ground, everyone loses out.

The world wide web is beginning its first major period of consolidation now. This is clearly evidenced by end-user behaviour. Survey after survey among 'ordinary' internet users highlights the same issue: make websites work more like each other. Few, if any, real people want every site they visit to be fundamentally different from every other – particularly if they do basically the same things.

As a result, an essential part of the design process for any new stakeholder website involves building a clear picture of the established standards and practices across sites with a similar purpose or sites used by similar audiences. If end-users visit your site and are immediately able to understand its design, they will feel comfortable with making immediate use of it, and will feel welcome and confident. Undermining their confidence by presenting an incomprehensible design is unlikely to encourage them to absorb messages: they will be more focused on figuring out what to do next.

This does not mean that all sites should be the same. As we discussed earlier, small variations in approach can make a big difference to the end result. The challenge is to incorporate that the key characteristics required to meet the expectations of a user, while ensuring that the unique characteristics of your site exceed those same expectations.

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