Usable Websites Lead to Good Karma
As for not-so-usable websites? This blog’s banner says it all.
Web usability is my passion. As I write this I can just hear my fiance, friends and coworkers giggle at the understatement. The fact is, I’m a bit of a usability fanatic. Many people scream at the TV when a player fumbles a ball or a referee makes a bad call. Me? I couldn’t care less about who wins the Super Bowl. But, I’ll scream and curse at my monitor when a web site loses my form field data or disables my browser’s Back button.
The fact is, we all deserve well-designed and cleanly-planned websites. We’re busy people! We don’t have time to fiddle with a menu that’s cryptic or fight to read text that’s too small. We deserve sites that welcome us in with clear navigation and valuable content. It used to be that the Web was seen as a toy or an ancillary tool. Now, it’s a critical part of our everyday research, banking and buying decisions.
During my years as a copywriter/producer for traditional media, it was forever my mission to immerse myself in the customer point of view and get at “what they really want” before starting a project. Ten years ago, a client came to me and asked if I could help unravel the mess that was their web site. I had dabbled in HTML and was a very early E-bay adopter. I took one look at the site and it was clear that it was built by a developer who didn’t have the faintest idea of what the customer needed.
Too many web development agencies continue this practice today. Developers make the web work…but they don’t always make it make sense.
After that first web site overhaul, I was hooked. The web visitor needed an advocate. Ten years later, they still do.
There are plenty of web stats, expensive reports and pricey analytics tools out there today. But, more often than not, it all comes down to common sense. Most websites become unusable because of the organizations’ internal politics, lack of planning or designing the site by committee. I’ve even seen a VP decide to put his company’s site in the hands of his 15 year old nephew. I’m sure his nephew had fun. The users most certainly did not.
The goal of this blog is to praise those sites who put the visitors’ needs first and to call out those who clearly do not. We’re talking about any site–not just the big guys. Small businesses should deliver quality websites, too.
Please share your own examples, as well! We can all learn from each other with good and bad usability examples. Together we can raise our chances for good online karma!
