November 21, 2006 4 Comments

Usability

Here’s a hint for ANYONE who has a web presence:

Make it EASY to REACH you

I recently asked my good friend, Whitney, to help with a project, which involved reaching out to everyone in a certain community via email. It turned out that a great many sites made it really hard to find contact information, so that someone could get back to them. Uh, wouldn’t contact be a good thing?

And while we’re at it:

Make the MAIN THING Obvious

If your site’s a hodgepodge, fine. But here’s one: I was looking at other conferences I might want to attend. Do you know what was the hardest thing to find on nearly all the sites? “REGISTER HERE.” It was the most difficult part. I could find agendas. I could *really* find sponsors. But boy oh boy, if I wanted to pay money to go to your event… I was out of luck.

It’s trickier with a blog, I guess, but even still, shouldn’t it be easier to navigate?

And now that I’ve bitched and whined, take a look at my site. Does it work for you?

Related posts:

  1. Design&Usability: Integrated Computing
  2. 9, 7, and Usability

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  • http://www.legalandrew.com Andrew Flusche

    Chris,

    I think this post gets right to a core problem of many websites and blogs: confusion! People on the web are lazy a lot of times, and if they can’t find what they need/want in a few seconds, they’ll move on.

    You’re absolutely right about contact details, too. I have gotten quite a few emails and Skype calls, just by encouraging contact and making it obvious how to do so. In fact, I think I might make it more obvious. What good is an online presence if people can’t connect to you in person?

    Take care,
    Andrew

  • http://www.legalandrew.com Andrew Flusche

    Chris,

    I think this post gets right to a core problem of many websites and blogs: confusion! People on the web are lazy a lot of times, and if they can’t find what they need/want in a few seconds, they’ll move on.

    You’re absolutely right about contact details, too. I have gotten quite a few emails and Skype calls, just by encouraging contact and making it obvious how to do so. In fact, I think I might make it more obvious. What good is an online presence if people can’t connect to you in person?

    Take care,
    Andrew

  • http://www.ldpodcast.com Whitney

    It was amazing how difficult it was to contact some people, or figure out who, in group projects, the contact people should be. Even after googling some people an dtracking them down, I received a response to “preferred contact emails” from only about half. Seems to me we can make it REALLY hard for people to get in contact, like, potential sponsors…..or we can make it easy. I redesigned my homepage after this experience to make contact easier- now I have to make sure I do the same for the blog. This is advice all of us can use!

  • http://www.ldpodcast.com Whitney

    It was amazing how difficult it was to contact some people, or figure out who, in group projects, the contact people should be. Even after googling some people an dtracking them down, I received a response to “preferred contact emails” from only about half. Seems to me we can make it REALLY hard for people to get in contact, like, potential sponsors…..or we can make it easy. I redesigned my homepage after this experience to make contact easier- now I have to make sure I do the same for the blog. This is advice all of us can use!