Some websites make me feel like I’m browsing a comic book. As menus slide around, words float by, and content dynamically refreshes, I can’t help be think about the old Batman and Robin comic books: “whizz”… “bang”… “pow”…

The interactive nature of the Internet makes it tempting for website owners to build fully-automated, application-like websites that glide, slide, and flash their way into the user’s face. But while technologies like AJAX make interaction and automation easy, more and more site owners are starting to take it a little too far.

There’s a simple rule of thumb that I think applies to any aspect of your website’s design: if adding eye candy, automation, or other whizz/bang/pow features slows down the interaction with your site, it should be scrapped.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re thinking of adding some fancy self-expanding menus to your site’s navigation. To reach one of the services you offer on your site, users must click “Services”, navigate the page to the specific service they’re after, and click another link to reach the service’s page. By adding self-expanding menus, users could hover over “Services” and choose the service name from an automatically-generated list.

It might seem like a simple answer: the self-expanding menus would be much quicker to use. In practice, that may not be the case. It may literally be faster to click-through using the old menus. Only timed tests will tell.

But from a usability standpoint, the self-expanding menus may actually make interacting with your site slower.

When users see the list of services in the self-expanding menu, they’ll show up as “Service A”, “Service B”, “Service C”, etc. I’m new to your site. I have no clue what Service A is. I have no idea what makes Service B any different from Service C. The old landing page that you used to have had descriptions and screenshots of each service. Users could quickly get a feel for what each of your services did.

The new menus make people click-through and read each service description to find the one they’re after. When it’s all said and done, it’s quicker to read the descriptions on the landing page and jump straight to the service you want.

Search engines will like your old menus better, too. They’re not big fans of AJAX and Flash. So from an SEO standpoint, the old menus might be better. Users visiting with browsers that don’t support whizz, bang, and pow will also be happier with your old menus because they’re actually be able to use them. Mobile users will appreciate the old menus, too.

This is, of course, one example. And since I was trying to prove a point, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that our self-expanding AJAX menus lost. But it’s a valid point and it’s one that website owners should always take into consideration.

Every site is different. Depending on the content, purpose, and user base of your site, whizz, bang, and pow may work well for you. But it’s not a decision that you should make simply to say your site has the latest and greatest technologies. It shouldn’t be a decision that’s made just for the sake of pretty.

Like any aspect of site design, the addition of whizz, bang, and pow should be carefully considered from the user’s perspective. It’s also important to remember that your perspective will always be slanted. *You* know all about the services you offer, the content on your site, and the navigation/layout. But your visitors don’t.

What are your thoughts on whizz, bang, pow? Is there a happy medium that must be met? I’d love to hear what some design-inclined folks think as compared to what the usability crowd would say. Which side should be sacrificed first? Is a sacrifice even needed?