Opinion

Love and the Art of the Webwright:

A Theatrical Model
for Web Sites (part 2)

Significant Other Services.com (SOS) is an imaginary Web site that brings together love, theater and the Net. The introduction portion of the Web site was designed to build a relationship with first-time visitors. Given the average attention span of visitors at eight seconds, the sooner the drama commences the better. Some visitors will bypass this introduction and go straight to the services. However, often these same people, when frustrated or antsy for whatever reason, will wander back into this introductory area. If the webwright designs the introduction to invoke a wide range of feelings and opinions, it may serve as a basis from which visitors connect with one another because the experience is so unique, it deserves to be shared. Note that the Significant Other Services.com Web site serves as a bare-bones template and does not incorporate tools such as Java, databases, Flash animation, search functions, etc.

As a first step, the webwright wants visitors to identify themselves as a protagonist. The webwright does this by directly and indirectly asking questions and inviting them to actively explore the Web site to satisfy a personal need or desire. In theater, the protagonist is the character with whom audiences identify more than any of the other characters. The protagonist is the "voice" of the play and the script is written from his, her or its point of view. The playwright encourages the audience to make an emotional investment in what happens to him, her or it. In developing this character, the playwright asks:

What does he, she or it want?

What are his, her or its hopes and fears?

What is his, her or its most prominent fatal flaw?

Other webwrights use a more subtle approach through language (lots of "yous") or graphics. Sometimes the navigational choices themselves help visitors answer the questions. Regardless, the most effective Web sites validate a visitor's needs and desires and quickly establish the "voice" of the Web site. The questions asked on the introductory portion of our Significant Other Services.com Web site are designed to stimulate some of the sensory effects of falling in love, while making visitors feel safe and confident in the Web site itself. "What do you want?" is graphically reinforced to better attract the appropriate audience of visitors as well as set the tone. Hopes and fears are triggered by the visual possibilities, reinforced by sound or click-through content or any number of interactive possibilities. The protagonist's fatal flaw—not having a significant other or SO— initiates the dramatic action, whether the visitor dives into the Web site or continues viewing the introductory content. The hook is the result of the visitor identifying himself or herself as the protagonist needing to overcome a fatal flaw.

Web site construction allows the webwright the luxury of hedging their bets by including menus and buttons for more direct navigation on every page, just in case the visitor is ready to take action. However, the more compelling the content that drives the visitor to follow the webwright's intent, the deeper the relationship between visitor and Web site. On the stage, design elements include sets, costumes and lighting to establish place and time, conditioned by mood or setting. The multitude of choices made by designers for plays by Shakespeare demonstrate how variable choices can be while preserving the meaning of the play. Despite décor or the lack thereof, the design elements ask the protagonist:

Where am I?

Why am I here?

Webwrights use text, graphics, animation, sound (too bad smell can't be transmitted) or other incentives to help visitors answer these same questions. The answers in either medium are not so simple or direct. The more dynamic the experience of satisfying those answers becomes the richer and longer-lasting the relationship between the visitor and the Web site. The collaboration between design and content alone can facilitate a significant moment (sigmo) by validating the visitor's state of mind. On Significant Other Services.com, examples of successful love connections encourage the visitor to compare his or her experiences in love. In this way the Web site gives the visitor a context so that they may begin to answer the question, "Where am I?" By presenting scenarios of lovers, the visitor is motivated to overcome their fatal flaw of not having a SO.

Ask Jeeves or even William Shatner's promotion of Priceline.com exemplify how Web sites can create a provocative antagonist to heighten online drama. The antagonist of a Web site is simply that information the visitor has yet to learn or actions they have yet to act upon. In other words, the antagonist represents ignorance of resources or the emotional states that prevent overcoming the fatal flaw. Historically, the antagonist provokes dramatic action through contrast or conflict with the protagonist. When confronted by the antagonist, the questions the protagonist asks include:

Who are you?

What makes you different from me?

How and why do you challenge me?

Will answering these questions alienate the visitor of a Web site? Not at all. Contrast separates what is known from what is not known. The webwright offers many ways for the visitor to find information by offering a variety of navigational tools that lead to these helpful resources. Tools include buttons, menus, graphics and text. The webwright uses these tools to give the Web site a distinctive voice or a look that practically anthropomorphizes the information. This helps visitors better identify the antagonist of ignorance.

Significant Other Services.com encourages relationships with other visitors so that other visitors can also become antagonists that help create sigmos. Whether through message boards, chat, discussion mailing lists or even a personalized autoresponder, opportunities for sigmos require connection with another person, actual or assimilated. On the Significant Other Services.com Web site, the antagonist is in the ignorant state of how to overcome loneliness. For some visitors, identifying the antagonist is enough to inspire action. However, content that validates loneliness without judgment or blame can engender trust in SOS and its services (especially the ones that cost). This simple yet often overlooked transition of a visitor's need into action can deepen the visitor's experience, possibly inspiring a sigmo. The artistry of the webwright that encourages visitors to make the transition from need to action is an art unto itself. Therefore, the rules cannot be easily articulated.

Conflict is the root of drama. The friction of conflict seduces the audience into anticipating a sigmo. Conflict provides thrill, excitement and potential risk. It is the beginning of the sigmo rush.

All the special effects in the world cannot compete with the tension created by conflict. When live and in real-time, an audience experiences conflict through all of their senses. Web sites can either offer real-time opportunities or, if clever, assimilate a real-time experience. Online trading, such as Ameritrade, and auctions, like Ebay, create high drama on the Net. Web sites that encourage collective purchasing as a way of reducing the price, such as Mercata, invoke drama by requiring the participation of other people in real-time, or at least the appearance of such. The webwright knows that conflict is a tricky business. The more trusting a relationship the Web site builds with a visitor, the more likely the visitor will utilize the Web site's services. Experiencing conflict reinforces that trust only when resolution of the conflict is either experienced or in sight. Assuming visitors are blind romantics who will fall in love with anything is folly, but pushing visitors too hard will alienate them. Finding the balance so that visitors experience conflict without feeling so uncomfortable they immediately click onwards, separates the popular Web sites from the millions of others, and the webmaster from the webwright. Timing and luck are contributing factors when it comes to popularity and baffle even the highly skilled and successful. Significant Other Services.com uses a visitor's probable past experiences in love to fuel the conflict between love and loneliness. The actual circumstances of those past experiences may be complex, but the emotional baggage is often predictable and easily articulated. In invoking the past, the webwright has placed the conflict within the heart and mind of the visitor, so that the Web site remains neutral or even safe territory. Is this manipulative? Absolutely, so what else is new?

Resistance to overcoming conflict means the protagonist must overcome his, her or its fatal flaw. In a comedy, the protagonist is successful; in a tragedy, he, she or it is not. Resistance to overcoming this fatal flaw is natural and sustains dramatic tension. The webwright wishes to avoid tragedy by assuring the visitor is provided with enough information to let him or her know that their conflict arising from wanting to finally reach out for love, yet not knowing quite how to do that safely, can be resolved. At the same time, they are not immediately given enough information to resolve their conflict without participating in what the Web site has to offer.

By now, the visitor is hooked! But the webwright still needs to reel her or him in. In the conclusion of this series, Z. Sharon Glantz will reveal the final steps to creating successful business relationships with Internet customers.

Z. Sharon Glantz has written and produced educational plays for three Washington State departments, Puget Sound Power & Light, Washington Mutual Savings Bank, two departments of City of Seattle, and other corporations and government agencies. Her play Tarot for Fools received a public reading at Astrology et al in Wallingford on July 22, 2001. She is currently experimenting with a variety of projects at Konnexxus, as well as working on her second novel and a workbook on Tarot Journaling, on which she is currently teaching classes at Astrology Et Al.