Back in Finland web design always used to pay quite a lot of attention to usability and functionality. Even though this might not always be so obvious in the final “product”, there seemed to be a generel agreement over this so called “nielsenian” approach, where the “cool design stuff” were often considered if not pointless, at least somewhat meaningless unless thet had some concrete task or mission to fulfill.

In practice that meant that especially Flash but also in many cases JavaScript -snippets, widgets and particles were often frowned upon. The reasoning behind this was pure pragmatism: some people might have had JavaScript disabled, or they might not have the Flash-player or even the necessary knowhow to install it. Furthermore, often these extra parts  brought no concrete benefits as such (besides the graphic design factor), only increased loading times and made the usability of the site more difficult. If the same could be said in simple text, then it was better to opt for the text.

The same applied for things such as entrance pages: if their only point was to welcome the visitor, then they had no point. Overall less was better, everything else was neither needed nor wanted, amounting to nothing more than kitsch. All sorts of movings of text, blinkings, additional pages etc. were seen as annoyence which one was better to stay away from.

Lately all this has changed a little bit, thanks to increased bandwiths and introduction/wider use of things such as Ajax, ActionScript etc. The general guideline still exists though, i.e. if you can live without, then that is the way to go. However, in the other end of Europe, in Spain, it seems this is not the case at all, or for that matter, never has been.

In Spain many of the sites seem to have an entrance page, or at least more “spectacular” index page. Flash is more widely used, and little visual tricks (change of opacity etc.) one can achieve with JavaScript are abundant. A page which has nothing extra, is seen often as boring and one that carries very little appeal. It is not enough for a site to provide only information, the design has to be up-to-date as well. Sometimes it is even the other way around, the info is outdated but the design not.

Pages that purely do their job are often considered boring here. That also means that people seem to stay away, the boringness of a site somehow deteriorates the page content as well. Things are especially bad if you are trying to sell something via your site, or the site works as a display window of your company. In Finland you might get by if your site looked a bit dull but worked (but not if it did not). In Spain it might be even more or less ok if things do not work 100%, but if they look bad visually, no matter if they work or not, success is an unlikely visitor. Then again, little movement, bright colors, fading or blinking images might just do the trick.

In one way or another this also reflects the cultural differences between the two countries as well. The appeal of things, how things look in general, are much more appreciated in here than in Finland. It might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the functioning of things does not have the same value as in Finland, or to put it another way, it might equally bad if things look bad. Surface is equal to what lies beneath.

I do not know if this is the case between other North/South European countries as well, or, where do the countries in the middle position themselves. In any case, if you are a Finn going Spain pay attention to not only how things are but also how things look. If vice versa, it might be a good idea to check how things are under the hood. In both cases, no worries, it is a ride worth taking.