I have a nascent theory that in marketing failure is easily forgotten, while successes are remembered. For this reason, marketers in an area they are unfamiliar with become stubbornly "radical". They don't care if scrolling text sells as much as they care that they are the only ones doing it. If it works, they get a bonus, if it doesn't, oh well, try something else. The flip side of this is that if they stumble on success (and I think 99% of marketing success is luck), they stick with it and beat it to death.

For example (and to reference an earlier topic):

1. Web sites work as marketing tools (usually)
2. Web sites have always been done with tables and shims to support NS4.

So why would you mess with that? Even with NS4 slipping to about 2% share, they see it as a win. Going to a radical new format, with its myriad benefits, still has an element of risk. While any financial person would weight risk/reward and have jumped on the css bandwagon long ago, the marketer sees success in their hand and don't want to let go even with a bigger pile of success sitting on the table. Of course, as soon as everyone else starts grabbing it they won't think twice about dropping what they have. Much like children now that I think about it...

-Posted by Eric on November 12, 2002 09:46 PM

I would ask them what they are trying to accomplish with the scrolling text and see if you cant provide a better solution.

Do they just want that text to be seen? Maybe the site needs a new visual hierarchy? Or maybe they need to "buy in" to the existing hierarchy more.

Maybe you could show them a video tape of a user interacting with the site and throwing up on the monitor.

-Posted by josh on November 13, 2002 02:28 AM

Could be worse. They could be using Netscape 3 and be in love with the blink tag. :-)

Maybe you can find something on webpagesthatsuck.com about the marquee thing.

-Posted by JC on November 13, 2002 12:46 PM

When all else fails, give in. One thing that I've learned as a parent (and clients are often a lot like children), is that you have to pick your battles.

Ask yourself what's the harm in having a scroller? Sure it's stupid and hard to read. But is it going to cause the site to lose money? Will it send people into epileptic shock? Then just include it and stop pulling your hair out. It's not worth it.

-Posted by Adam Kalsey on November 13, 2002 05:42 PM

More important questions:
"is it going to keep new clients from hiring you?"
"is it going to ruin your reputation among your peers?"

-Posted by JC on November 14, 2002 08:26 AM

JC, those are the questions that are eating away at me. The UI has already been horribly butchered due to client demands, and adding in more crap makes me feel sick.

-Posted by Dan on November 14, 2002 10:17 AM

Dan, have you ever heard of Hal Helms? He's a coldfusion guru who helped develop the Fusebox development methodology.

It's not going to help you here, but he has some excellent techniques for helping prevent this stuff beforehand. here's a URL for his step-by-step development process, circa early 2001
http://www.halhelms.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=newsletters.jan2001

As for your current client... remind him that he's paying you for your expertise, which happens to be in UI design. He's not paying for a website; he could get that from a 15 year old nephew or a temp using frontpage. He's paying for a good website, done by a respected and talented professional whose judgements on web design should be respected as such.

Of course, you've probably already done that.

It may be that he doesn't specifically want a scrolling text thing, but feels the page needs to be livened up a bit, needs some kind of animation or sparkly shiny thing to make him feel special. Perhaps you could come up with something tasteful, maybe use flash or something, with a slideshow of some of his best selling products or something to that effect.

If that doesn't work, you could use the last-ditch technique we use sometimes.
Do what they want, and make it damned ugly. As bad as you can manage.

Most of the time they won't like it, and if they do, well, they're hopeless. Take their money, but don't put them in your portfolio. Don't put a developers credit on the site. Leave comments in the code like "Developer takes no responsibility for the following marquee tag. Client insisted and could not be convinced otherwise." Maybe have the client sign off on it with some kind of statement about releasing you from the liability of his design decisions.

I think chances are, though, that if you reach the point where you put it in there and it's ugly they'll change their mine because it's not what they'd envisioned.

-Posted by JC on November 14, 2002 10:58 AM