Historical Analogy: Visuals and Consumer Preferences
I've seen messages on various boards which mentioned the impact of aesthetic appearance on the relative popularities of Go2Net and other websites. I don't know to what extent visuals determine the traffic level on Internet sites, but a convincing example from the agricultural machinery business does come to mind.
John Deere is today the largest independent manufacturer of farm machinery, but this was not always true. John Deere (the man) invented the first steel horse-drawn plow in the 1840s, and developed a thriving business from it. But in the early 20th century, the emphasis was on mechanization, and tractor power was replacing the horse.
McCormick-Deering, later to become International Harvester, at one time was the leading manufacturer of general-purpose farm tractors. In those early days, tractors were very simple in their construction. John Deere Co. entered the field (no pun intended) by buying out the Waterloo Tractor Works.
A red-letter year in John Deere tractor history was 1938, the year the company enlisted the services of the Henry Dreyfuss industrial design studio in New York. The objective was to produce suggestions for how John Deere's entire tractor line could be aesthetically styled. Though this approach was known to elicit positive consumer response when applied to manufacture of automobiles and other consumer goods, John Deere Co.'s initiative was unprecedented in farm tractor manufacturing.
The result was overwhelmingly positive; equally impressive results were obtained by subsequent restylings of John Deere tractors in 1952, 1956, 1960, and 1972. The John Deere Co. was a "Johnny-come-lately" in the tractor field, but they became the leader, not only in total sales, but in setting the standard for tractor appearance, ergonomic design, and comfort which played such a pivotal role in winning over new customers.
The elevation of Go2Net to #8 from #13 on 100 Hot Rankings indicates that its user-friendly, yet comprehensive Go2Net Personal Page, versatile MetaCrawler search engine, Silicon Investor and other useful sites that are all just a click away from the Go2Net Personal Page, are well on the way to winning over a generation of current and new Internet users that are continually coming online.
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