What 6-Way Power Seats Can Teach You About Website Design

Last night my husband hunted on Craiglist for my birthday present.

After 15 minutes he came running into my office and practically drug me back to his office to show me pictures of something most people use every day but might not think twice about....power seats....for my new diesel (monster of a ) truck.

Was I excited? You Bet!

A quick 60 minutes later and with some installation help from the seller, I was on my way home sitting in my new power seat with lumbar support. We actually changed out the front seats entirely and the new center compartment had an extra storage cubby as well so I was floating on high.

I wrote on my Facebook page recently about trading in my 2007 Yukon for a 2008 Dodge Diesel monster of a truck to pull my horse trailer. After driving with a friend to Wickieup to pick up her new-ish horse trailer with my Yukon and realizing that it had nowhere near the hauling capability that a diesel had, I decided to trade up (or should I say trade back). We sold our diesel last year when gas prices hit $5 a gallon. At the time it made sense but I sure missed that truck.

My new truck has nearly everything I wanted it to have originally except for a driver's power seat - at the time I didn't think that mattered. Fast forward a week from purchase and I realized that with my short inseam, without the ability to tip the seat down, and unless my shoe had a slight heal, it was actually hard to press the gas pedal down. So I compromised and pulled the seat forward enough to compensate. It worked...kind of.

While I was driving home last night a thought struck me that there are similiaries between designing a website and my new power seat.

I looked at the front seats that I took out of my truck last night and realized they were pretty run of the mill standard seats - no power, no options - they just moved forward and backward. They were pretty to look at, but other than being able to move forwards and backwards, they didn't really do much else. That meant that I had to have just the right leg length to fit into those seats...the seat couldn't be made to fit me. Unless I could find a way to be comfortable up close to the steering wheel, that seat wasn't going to work long-term for me.

When I got home I started adjusting the buttons on my seat to find just the right position. I like to sit up a bit higher so I can see the road so I raised the seat; but in order to make sure I can comfortably reach the gas pedal, I then had to tip the seat down so my legs didn't dangle (don't laugh!). Now that my seat was tipped down I found I could actually scoot the seat back since my legs were magically longer. After about 5 minutes I found what I was looking for. Presto, the perfect seat position!

So how exactly do these seats remind me of website design? This post I'll discuss the similarities and next post I'll discuss how you can get started.

Life without options can feel limiting, uncofortable and perhaps scary even when it leaves you in a situation where you don't have choices that resonate with you.

My previous standard one-size-fits-all seat is more like most of the run-of-the-mill website design processes that seek to either plug you into a template (a preconstructed website, while trying to and make your photos and content fit into that design) or simply give you a dollar per page cost without knowing what you need and what is comfortable to you. This can be limiting, may not speak to your target audience and myy not provide you with much return on investment because it wasn't really designed with you in mind.

Web design that seeks to help you improve your business by finding that perfect set of options for you is much more like my new 6-way power seat. All the same seat positions are available to each driver who gets in my truck, but it's the combination of those seat positions that makes the seat flexible enough to fit almost any driver.

Designing a website to fit you, rather than you trying to fit into it is rewarding because it takes into account your needs and then provides options that can reveal solutions that are powerful and perfect for your business.