Dollars & Sense

Health is Wealth: Healthy Websites 🍎

Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this article reflect personal opinions and observations based on experiences with website design and retail services. The content is intended to provide insights and suggestions for improving transparency and measurement in the industry. It is not intended to disparage or defame any specific company or service provider. While the author draws comparisons between the website design industry and the food industry, all claims are general in nature and should not be construed as factual representations about any particular provider. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and form their own opinions before making any decisions related to website services or products.
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When you pick up a package of Oreos or yogurt at the grocery store, you can see the nutrition (or lack of it!) on the nutrition label on the back. Health advocates are encouraging the FDA to make warnings more obvious on packages—such as by placing information on the front of the package, shares The Wall St. Journal. Advocates have looked abroad for inspiration. In Mexico, you’ll find labels with a black octagon, resembling a stop sign, on the front of Doritos and Nature Valley granola bars. It turns out that many foods touting to be healthy are imposters. Nature Valley is really Sugar Valley.

Many Retail Websites Are Like Junk Food
When I saw these nutrition warnings, they reminded me of promises that website providers make to retailers. When a retailer picks a company to build its website, the retailer is promised a “nutritious meal” of: increased sales, better Google rankings, a smooth checkout process, and a good-looking website. If the store were buying a drink, it may think it's buying a nutritional green smoothie with some banana and acacia berries. But what if, instead, they end up with a website that brings fewer sales, a confusing checkout process, and a low Google ranking? If this website were a drink, it might resemble an ice cream shake—one that’s light on substance, heavy on sugar, and lacking meaningful benefits.

The customer only realizes its shortcomings long after it leaves the 'drive-through window' because it often takes about six months for a retailer to settle into their new website. When the promised results don’t materialize, the seller may ironically suggest the store invest more money in bad “shakes.”

The Retail Industry Lacks Widely Accepted Standards for Websites
One of the challenges retailers face is that there’s no clear way to compare the promises of different website providers with what’s actually delivered. The provider's website is filled with glowing testimonials and broad claims, making it difficult for retailers to make an informed decision. There is not often a scientific set of results showing what benefits the retailer will receive. For instance, we offer an online store solution, just like Shopify, Wix, and BigCommerce. However, there is no widely accepted system that helps retailers compare the results of different services after six months of use. One can’t see how much 'vitamin C' each website company delivers. Imagine food without any universally comparable nutrition labels. That’s essentially where website design is.

Nutrition labels work because they are a combination of grading and the publicity of this grade.

Let’s Give Our Industry a Free Checklist of What Makes a Website Healthy 
Due to this, I propose website providers show retailers a tangible list of what benefits they’ll receive—akin to what a nutrition label provides. To make this list, there could be a public list of 20 key metrics that one judges the success of a website. (I believe there should be universal, publicly available checklists that buyers and sellers use. I imagine them for website design and online stores. There may also be a need for them in website hosting, social media, etc.) The buyer and seller of the service would pick from this list and agree that this is what the site’s success will be judged by. Once they pick, say, four statistics, they’d set a baseline for these. The provider is responsible for improving on these stats in 6 months (or sooner). The metrics will be measured before the launch and 6 months after. 

For example, let's imagine we wanted to create a digital health label for gift and wedding registry services. We may choose these four metrics: sales captured, customer satisfaction, Google ranking, and checkout efficiency. In the example, I've shown what the label for The Finery, a gift shop in Mississippi that uses our services, may look like. 

We Can Lead by Example 
We can make it easier to help retailers see what they’re being promised and measure if they receive it.  We want to turn website design into a science, like nutrition. I can see us giving clients a checklist when they sign up and one to use after 6 months. Initially, they fill in metrics of where they are. After 6 months, they measure the same stats. If we did our job, those statistics should be better. I’d like to show our clients that we scientifically increase their Google ranking. 

Shop Local has dabbled in grading before. We offer a gift registry grader for use by retailers here: https://www.shoplocal.org/grade-your-registry.cfm. 
Yet, the test we generate is just for one store and is not meant to be published publicly. In contrast, a 'nutrition' label is a public grading system using standards accepted by many (sometimes competing) parties. 

The More Prominent the Label, the Harder the Provider Works to Improve the Statistics on the Label
A key part of making measurements meaningful is sharing the data publicly. The Wall St. Journal shares that calories in food and drinks required to have public labels plunged 23%. Why? Manufacturers changed their formulas to include less sodium and sugar. The labels, with their transparency, worked. I can see the same happening in website design. Public website labels would celebrate the website companies delivering value and shame the 'trans fat dealers.'

If retailers could more easily measure their website results, the providers would work harder to deliver more. In sum, our industry would be better with more measurements and transparency.

Imagine you visit your website and see a little health label at the bottom. You see that your site has a healthy grade. It may just make you want another helping. 


Homework:
Imagine you're making a 'nutrition label' for your industry. You and your peers would show it on your product or service. What information would be on your label?

Read the full WSJ article:
https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/fda-nutrition-label-front-of-food-packaging-ecf9bc0b?st=pjljr9bnmtyr4mp&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Tags:
wsj warning labels health labels digital health labels

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