11 RE: Dell.com is a bad exaple

“It’s only good for one type of person; the one that has no idea what they need.”

You mean like most of the people on the web? Most of the people who would visit the sites you and I make?

Dell.com and most sites like it are not made for people who want to immediately charge into the purchasing process, their research and budgeting considerations already taken care of. They are made for people who want to shop. That’s their primary purpose. Just like a real storefront, they have window dressing and encourage you to explore their products. So in that sense, it is user centric in that it is focused on the job most site visitors would use it for. People like you and me are not exactly a target demograhic for companies like Dell.

Although I admit that it’d be cool if they had a sub site or a link off of the main page for people who are ready to get right down to business and are done shopping.

posted at 10:16 am on February 20, 2004 by Derek Pennycuff

12 RE: Self referential loop.

Good point. Too bad we don’t have access to our competitor’s server logs. ;)

But still, your own server logs can be a great way to judge what is working and what isn’t. If you’re selling Granny’s Slow Cooked Country Peas and you describe them as “chocked full of slow cooked country goodness and green pea-ness” and “slow cooked” and “country goodness” turn up consistently in your search engine hits, but “green pea-ness” never does, you should probably consider a rewrite.

posted at 10:22 am on February 20, 2004 by Derek Pennycuff

13 The futility of language

Post-modernists claim that it’s much more likely for any attempt at communication to be misread than properly interpreted, and by extension all attempts at communication are pretty pointless. But then, post-modernism is filled with good ideas taken to logical extremes, at which point they become rather ridiculous. While I don’t think bleeding edge literary theory ever directly impacts common society, it does trickle down more effectively than Reaganomics. I think that the particular belief that language (written, spoken, or purely visual) is relatively worthless has lead to the abundance of jargon, corporate lingo, and academic language which fulfills the potential for language to be meaningless. There’s a plug-in for Dreamweaver that will insert filler text into your files. It can use Lorem Ipsom or meaningless corporate fodder. I have heard (but have no way of verifying) that a student once turned in a paper written by the Postmodernism Generator (located at http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/) and received high marks. At least when academic works were penned in Latin we could admit that it was a different language.

The primary function of such language seems to be to exclude others and feed the fevered egos of corporate big wigs and intellectuals. Jargon is a bit more acceptable. In our profession, for example, we have to toss around terms like xml and css in order to communicate with each other. We’ve got to call them something, and we can’t call them spaghetti and meatballs or things would be really confusing. We can go full throttle jargon when talking with other web professionals, but we tailor are pitches to clients to match the level of technical understanding of the client (“If I use pretty colors the stuff will look better on that tv thing attached to your computer”). We need to do the same thing for site visitors.

Not to fan the flames of egos, but most web professionals are smarter than the average bear. So if you are responsible for providing content as well as markup and structure and graphics and whatever else the client demands, and you’ve got what seems to be a perfect write up in front of you, it’s probably just over the head of your average site visitor.

Here’s a good example of the sort of language I’m talking about: http://www.occc.state.tx.us/pages/Legal/plain_lang/PLcomp.htm

posted at 10:55 am on February 20, 2004 by Derek Pennycuff

14 Brilliant

I just want to say “Thank You”, Nick, for writing this. So often designers and coders alike fail to understand what an average person [rather than user/eyeball/hit/etc.] is going to want to do on a site. More often, the creators push their own agenda of what they want that user to do. Big difference, and one more of us should be aware of.

Thanks again

posted at 10:57 am on February 20, 2004 by CM Harrington

15 Self-evident navigation titles

Nice article. The only thing I would like to add based on my experience is to use as much self-evident navigation titles whenever possible. For good or bad, most of the www users have come to accept and understand what type of information they will find behind the links titled “home”, “about”, “products and services”, and “contact”. This is one of very few rarities that needs to be taken advantages of. Still I see many established sites being cute with their navigation titles. They’re either too vague to the new visitors or unnecessarily descriptive.

posted at 11:04 am on February 20, 2004 by soxiam

16 what about UCD?

Good article! However, this stuff should be fundamental for every web designer. All of the points the author makes are good ones, and although some commenters have frowned at the dell and MS examples, the reason those pages are designed in their respective manners is because both of those companies utilize User Centered Design to really get to know their users: who they are, their crucial tasks, their needs, their attitudes. It is much more imvolved than just analyzing log files.

These are all things that go way beyond using descriptive linking and appropriate language: those are the “basics”. UCD should be used to drive information architecture, and all other aspects of the user experience. The site creators take the findings of UCD research, and then make the appropriate compromises to accomodate both the user experience and metric driven business objectives.

posted at 12:20 pm on February 20, 2004 by Jeff

17 I Disagree

I have traversed Dell’s website and Microsoft.com many times and I must say that I disagree with the article on their ease of usability. Both are cumbersome and confusing, and I’ve gotten lost and frustrated in both quite often.

I would say that Apple.com, however, is very usable. The navigation is very clear, straightforward, and consistent, and the content is minimal and to the point.

posted at 12:27 pm on February 20, 2004 by Matthew

18 Check Out & Review My Latest

Over the past couple of years, I did a major overhaul of how I write web pages. (much of this due to suggestions at AListPart.com)

I’ve finally implemented a couple of web sites which use these techniques:

www.shubee.com
and
www.firstpresmacon.org

There are still a few major shortcomings which I am in the process of correcting:
Most significant is that both of these sites only work well with IE6 and with Javascript ON

…I know… bad… bad…

…I have some solid plans for getting them to work well with or without Javascript and with IE5+ & Mozilla.

Nevertheless, check them out with IE6 and Javascript.

Visit the inside pages and check out how the subnav tree on the left mirrors that section’s dropdown menu up top.

Also, the site APPEARS to be a frames site, but is not (view source to see).

Also, many of the goodies I describe use a minimum amount of Javascript so as to rely on CSS as much as possible. This makes these download and run much more efficiently than the similar Javascript-heavy tools of past years.

I also use much CSS to keep the actual page content to a minimum. Also, since the Javascript menus NEED a little javascript to work, these are referenced in an external javascript file. Keyword density is helped by this strategy.

Finally, while I said that Javascript won’t work yet, I did design it with the idea of a graceful degrade with Javascript turned off.

The ideas, once I get it working, is that the top navbar buttons would work without Javascript and the left navbar would still be in view without Javascript.

Compliments AND Criticisms welcome.

Rob McEwen
PowerView Systems

posted at 02:21 pm on February 20, 2004 by Rob McEwen

19 ..continued..

Also, many of the ShuBee.com pages are still spartan (and the home page is about to get a makeover). The following is a good example of how all the pages will eventually look:

http://www.shubee.com/shoe-covers/

(In both instances, each of these clients had tremendous problems with their previous web site providers… they both said, “just get it up there, even if some pages are a little sparse or missing”)

Rob McEwen

posted at 02:25 pm on February 20, 2004 by Rob McEwen

20 Microsoft.com?

I found the subject and many of the points of the article to be very correct, however Microsoft.Com is just not a good example of “Helping Your Visitors.” That web site makes an average user [or even an experienced web developer] sit there for several minutes before finding a relevant link. I think that YES we must design with the User in mind, but this Does NOT mean we should create a page with 1000 links on it. I’ve seen people goto that website and simply give up after looking at all those links….its just confusing and really poorly designed.

Simplicity is king…. why choose from 100 links when 10 will do. Microsoft is a HUGE company that offers several different products, why not have a simple interface that allows the web user to look by sections, like “Hardware” “Windows” “Software” etc.

thats just my 2cents.

posted at 03:04 pm on February 20, 2004 by Brian