- Web Sites Are Supposed to Make Things Easier, Arent They?
- Standardization, Please!
- Requiring Unnecessary Features or Plug-ins for Navigation
- Silent Failures for Unavailable Browser Features
- Failing Completely for Unavailable Features or Unsupported Browsers/Versions
- Browsers Not Offering Per Window or Easily Reversible Setting Changes
- Companies Registering <sitename> But Not <http://www.sitename>
- Making Information Hard to Find
- Making It Hard to Find or Select Among Products
- Being Impossible to Contact
- Putting Information Only in PDF or Document Format, Not in HTML or at Least Text Files
- Having No-Value-Added Click Here to Enter Splash Pages
- Check Your Site for Stupidity
Making It Hard to Find or Select Among Products
Don’t assume that site visitors know the names, models, or whatever of your product lines—especially if you keep changing them.
Don’t assume that we know whether a given product is for small office/home office (SOHO), medium-sized businesses, or enterprises.
In my experience, the biggest offenders in this area have been companies selling notebook computers: Dell, HP, IBM, and so on. Want an example? Consider Dell’s notebook categories as of February 20, 2006:
- Dell Inspiron Notebooks
- Home & Home Office
- Small Business
- Medium & Large Business
- State & Local Government
What makes a notebook more appropriate for a large business than a home office or local government use?
Surge protectors and UPSes are another example of problematic "How can we tell what’s what?" categories, with a dozen products that have identical descriptions.