This article discusses how Darwin's ideas influence web site design.

1. Charles Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” may be the greatest idea ever thought. Darwin’s observation of natural diversity led to lifelong preoccupation. Darwin’s visit to the Galapagos Islands proved critical. Different isolated islands influenced species development in a variety of ways. Darwin gathered what he thought were different species of birds. In fact, all of the birds were the same species - Finches. Darwin’s mistake was easy. The birds looked different. The Galapagos birds adapted to food sources on their island. One Finch had a short tough beak to crack hard seeds. Another bird from a different island had a long narrow beak to penetrate flowers for pollen and nectar.Darwin proposed the greatest idea ever thought with a hole in its middle as an excellent PBS documentary called What Darwin Never Knew explains. Darwin couldn’t sequence genes. He couldn’t confirm observations at the genetic level as modern science can. Now we identify the unique gene sequence accounting for inter-species variation. Modern science fills Darwin’s hole.We see “natural selection” in web marketing and web development too. Web sites are organic. Good web sites change quickly placing value on traits that aid in survival. Attracting and converting web site visitors (traffic) are behaviors common to all web sites. Just like Darwin’s Finches, web sites adapt to their food source (revenue).The web is also strangely similar to the isolated Galapagos Islands. Sites with common missions watch each other like hawks looking for field mice. When a site modifies its design or marketing approach competitors mark the change, test it almost immediately and, if the test proves positive, adapt the competitor’s change. It is almost impossible to create lasting competitive advantage in web offers or design. In a strange way, web sites WANT innovations copied. Copying means others believe in the innovation. Copying means an innovation wasn’t an anomaly. Copying justifies innovation while reducing its value; life is an ironic bitch sometimes ☺.Ever notice how web sites of similar mission tend to look and sound the same? This is Darwin’s species modification taking place before your eyes. Reduction to the mean is another way to think of this pooling of web “genes”. Consumers play an important role in web development. Consumers shape the Internet’s gene pool. Every web manager watches web analytics like a hawk too. When a modification increases conversion or traffic it gets kept and copied. When an innovation hurts traffic or conversion it is quickly abandoned. Consumer reactions, if your web site receives enough traffic, can almost be judged real time. Web Managers can watch and tally the votes for their latest efforts instantly. In a matter of hours the jury comes in and innovation is kept, modified or abandoned. This is why “web time” is so much faster than any previous form of marketing.There were few conventions to copy when I designed my first web site in 1999 (FoundObjects.com my first web site design). Home page, category and product pages and carts displayed a high degree of variability. Millions of transactions later “conventions” or consumer shaped behavior exist for every major piece of a web site. Variation exists, but variation is greater from island to island than site to site.This means Amazon, Overstock and Target web sites look similar. These large e-commerce web sites live on the same transactional island with millions of Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) and similar looks. Amazon et al. will be different from Chiat Day, Ogilvy and Leo Burnett. Advertising agencies like these are on a different Galapagos island where visual creativity is prized over transaction or “conversion”. The first task of a web developer is to understand what island the site they are working on belongs. Successful web developers should perform a critical analysis of common features, features common to successful web sites within their customer’s business (sometimes called a business vertical), before firing up Photoshop or writing a line of code.Good web developers understand innovation and emulation are important. Emulation can gain immediate acceptance. Innovation may confuse. A new web site has many battles. It is best to use emulation to help some functions feel familiar. The closer you get to money the more emulation is important. As consumers get closer to giving a web site their Visa or MasterCard they want assurances. They want to know their transaction is secure. Wild innovations in carts can be needlessly jarring, confusing and conversion lowering. Carts are great places to look like everyone else. The cost of cart innovation is greater than its benefits.Yes web site shopping carts have variation, but shopping cart variation is around a mean of compliance proving the rule. Some carts step you through different pages while some stay still, but all seek to create reassurance and a sense of security. This is “variation around a mean of compliance”.Don’t read this post as Martin saying innovation is bad. Quite the contrary, innovation on the margin is expected. You may discover the next big thing. Playing with the crown jewels risks more than you can gain, a sucker’s bet. Innovate in offer, design and tactics. If I still managed multi-million dollar web sites I would be innovating around video. I tested videos on the product page as Director of E-Commerce and product page videos more than doubled conversion. It took a year to find the right formula, but once we found it rolling video to every product page we could afford as quickly as we could made sense.We needed to do similar investigations for Home and Category pages. Video can hurt conversion. This was one lesson from our first attempts to add video to product pages. We had to find the right formula, but the larger truth is video makes a more compelling conversion environment than text and graphics alone. You have to have text for search engine spiders, but who reads anymore (other than algorithms). How video will work best on your Home, Category and Product Pages I can’t answer. Test, test and test some more to find your formula. Finding it may even give you weeks or months of competitive advantage before your hyena competition is on you. Remember Michael Corleone in Godfather III, “This is the business we’ve chosen,” and innovate at the margin, understand what island you are on and its “emulation” traits and watch competitors and web analytics like a hawk. When in doubt ask yourself WWCDD (What Would Charles Darwin Do)?<br />