Fictive Kin

High-Touch Modules

Rounding out our modular system is the high-touch module, which sits somewhere between the workhorse and the showstopper. Like the showstoppers, the high-touch modules tell a highly bespoke story about something unique to the business, organization, or product line.

Unlike the showstoppers, these modules are not about showing off. They are about clarity. The form must follow (and elevate) the content.

Example: By far the most common example of a high-touch module is found on the pricing page. While there are best practices in laying out pricing tiers / options on a site, the solution that performs best for your specific product or service will very likely be highly custom. It is rare that a pricing page that works well for one company can be airlifted to another and work just as well.

Screenshots of pricing pages on a variety of web sites.

A typical web system will have a handful of high-touch modules. They tend to be easy to spot because they usually have a very important job to do.

In designing and building a high-touch module, it is important to plan upfront for change. You should expect that these modules will be optimized and finessed over time to deliver improving results.

Because change is expected, you can be a little looser with your standards for these modules. This is because the more polished a module is, the harder it is to change and any friction will lessen the organizational willingness to improve the modules over time.

Okay, enough of all this module talk!

Let’s see what happens when they work together to make actual pages.