21 Dell?... Microsoft?

I tend to agree with users who’ve posted reflecting on their substandard experiences using the Dell and Microsoft sites. These sites provide a good example of the difficulty of designing “one size fits all” navigation scheme for a large site. For sites like this I’ve found that navigation designed for your primary audience backed by a usable search feature for quick access often works best.

posted at 08:55 pm on February 20, 2004 by Andrew

22 Hell Freezes Over

Wow. I’m suprised someone from ALA would say something nice about Microsoft. No sarcasm, I really am.

posted at 09:49 pm on February 20, 2004 by Dante-Cubed

23 Dell? I hate having to self identify

I just had to visit Dell.com this week to look up some specs on a Dell flatscreen monitor at work. All I wanted to do was go to a Products page, click on Monitors or Hardware, etc., and find what I needed. I had to drill down eight links from the main page to find what I was looking for.This, of course, was after a failed attempt with their site search engine because I initially did not want to self-identify (but gave in, and went back to the main page to start from scratch).

I hope to God that none of your readers take that part of your article seriously and base their site’s navigation off of Dell’s.

posted at 01:27 am on February 21, 2004 by Michael

24 Nice article

Writing for the web isn’t always obvious.

I am one of those guys who thinks that many Blogs are an abomination. Especially when related to a Portfolio site. You don’t want to read everything about the designer. You want to know what he can do for you.

2advanced.com, while probably the final frontier when it comes to “Flash Interface Artists” now that WDDG has “turned to the light”, has a healthy bit of advertising text. In many ways what writing directed to the customer is all about. It’s a lot of cookie-cutters but sometimes that is what seem to work.

posted at 01:15 pm on February 21, 2004 by Fredrik

25 Internal search logs - not external referrer logs

External referrer logs will only give you war, fuzzy feeling inside.

Internal search logs are the most powerfull tool to analyze user behavior. See what search words are used in your Search Box (you ave one, don’t you???) and see what pages do they get at the top.

Watch carefuly the zero results search terms. Those are the first terms that should be taken care of.

posted at 11:19 pm on February 21, 2004 by Hanan Cohen

26 Dell.Com isn't user-centric

Dell.Com isn’t user-centric. Whenever I visit Dell’s site I have to determine the context of my visit ahead of time.

Sometimes I’m buying for myself; sometimes for a large company; sometimes for my parent’s small business.

I’d rather identify what I’m after: a product or a service. Then I can continue from there.

What does identifying yourself as a consumer, small-biz or large company serve to do? It allows Dell to discriminate you buy presenting different pricing to you.

A.

posted at 12:57 am on February 22, 2004 by Anand Kumria

27 Simple = Good

Word reduction is a fantastic technique: take what you want to say to the user and cut it down to plain and straight-forward language (allowing for tone, of course. ;) ).

To paraphrase acclaimed copywriter, Luke Sullivan, “If you can’t reduce your [statement] to a few crisp words and phrases, there’s something wrong with your [statement].”

Note: Please don’t confuse my use of the word simple with simplistic. I don’t mean to be simplistic. Just. Simple.

posted at 05:19 am on February 23, 2004 by Lorenzo Gabba

28 Apple.com

I side with Mathew, and agree that [url=“http://www.apple.com/”]Apple.com[/url] is extremely usable, and has one of the clearest and most effective interfaces I have ever seen.

Dell and Microsoft I agree suffer from the problems others have mentioned.

posted at 06:39 pm on February 23, 2004 by Scott Brainard

29 don't talk to me about dell...

Generally a good article, but I have to take issue with the use of Dell as a good example of design.

When I go there, I want to buy a computer. These days Dell doesn’t let me do that – instead it wants to know what type of organization I work for! I find this hugely frustrating, not to mention an invasion of my privacy. Are the computers on sale in each section the same machines, and are they the same price? There’s only one way to find out, and that involves a lot of clicking.

Imagine if your local supermarket insisted on asking what you do for a living before agreeing to sell you some bacon.

So I’d add to the article: “don’t put stupid marketing things between your customers and what they’re trying to find”. In this case, it’s computers, in case that’s still not clear.

posted at 09:16 am on February 24, 2004 by phil wigglesworth

30 This is great, too bad...

… that the folks that really need to read this aren’t. I’d have to say that the article did a great job of summarizing the arguments by the preacher to the choir. Thats not bad, as even the choir strays and sins (which is probably worse because you know better)!

posted at 08:20 pm on February 24, 2004 by Joe