Is your website "fast and furious?"   

Believe it or not, the 1995 movie The Fast and the Furious can teach us a lot about modern web design.

The Fast and the Furious introduced the general public to "tuner" cars. These were "import" sports cars that had after-market, performance-enhancing features added, such as nitrous-oxide, racing transmissions, and low-restriction exhaust. Additionally, they were loaded with decidedly non-performance features such as bold graphics, top-of-the-line stereo systems and even decorative lighting beneath the car.

The tuner-looking vehicles you see at the local high school or mall tend to perform nothing like those in the movie.

The local variety tends to be built on small, front-wheel drive (which has inherent performance limitations) "economy cars" rather than sports cars.

The hidden structure of these economy cars (the chassis, suspension, transmission and engine) wasn't designed to handle high speeds like a sports car. Thus, their owners tend to add visual and aural accessories that scream "look at me" - features that may look and sound impressive, but don't make the car any faster.

On the other hand, high-end performance sedans (think BMW and Lexus), tend not to rely on an abundance of overt visual cues to convey that they're a fast car. No excess of decorative lighting, overly-large but nonfunctional spoilers, or in-your-face graphics for them. Instead, they use stylish, but not over-the-top, design and subtleties (like functional spoilers) to convey that underneath the hood (and body), lies a machine that's capable of putting a huge smile on the driver's face with its power and handling.

Cars have been around long enough that the general public has developed a strong understanding of their qualities, both seen and unseen. Few people will ever see an airbag deploy, yet most understand an airbag's value.  Websites, on the other hand, are still relatively new. As a result, the general public isn't nearly as familiar with websites' less-obvious characteristics (the "airbags" of websites). So a website that screams "look at me" with external trappings like an animated "splash screen," background sound, non-orthodox, (i.e. unrecognizable) scroll bars, or "mystery meat navigation" (menus that you have to click on to discover what they do), might seem to be well built. But there's a likelihood that such trappings are compensating for a lack of good design, usability, marketability and overall website "architecture" (the understanding and balancing of both form and function).

If your business owns a website that contains one or more of the "fast and furious" style of features, consider whether these are features your customers and clients appreciate. If not, they features might be conveying (justified or not), a message of trendy style over substance. Remember, the car you drive says a lot about you.

This article was originally published in the Coeur d'Alene Press' North Idaho Business Journal