Being an advocate
Not long after I started building websites for clients, I somehow took on the role of advocating for the visitor.
It all happened quite innocently. It wasn’t a role I planned to take on. It’s not a formal role in our company. You won’t see Visitor Advocate on my business cards.
Advocating for the visitor seems to be something that comes naturally to me. Maybe it’s because I spend so much time visiting websites every day. I visit websites that do things well. More often than not, I visit websites that do things horribly.
When I land on one of those not-so-great websites, I shake my head and wonder if anyone involved in the building of that site thought to take 2 minutes to imagine being a visitor. I suspect if they had, things would have turned out differently.
As I spent more time understanding web accessibility, my advocacy kicked in to higher gear. Unfortunately, that means my head shakes more often too.
This role doesn’t always make me a popular member of the team for sure. I’m usually seen as the one who wants to squash all the cool new toys and kibosh the bells and whistles. But that’s actually not the case.
I love to be wowed by new and fancy just like the next person. However – and this is the big however – I don’t want that bling to distract me or prevent me from doing what I came to a website to do in the first place: find some information, book an appointment or buy a new gizmo.
Every person in the process of building a website – client, designer, writer, developer – needs to be a Visitor Advocate. That’s really we’re building a website in the first place – to solve a problem for a visitor on the other side of the screen.