website usability | Aqua Vita

The other day, I began researching branded jump drives for AVC. Nothing says “I love you” to clients like a stylish, pocket-sized piece of technology that makes their lives a little easier, right?

But alas, this path was filled with far more peril than I had realized. Here’s how it went down:

The first step, of COURSE, was to Google it.

Holy thorough search query, Batman! This is a good lookin’ list. Time to check out the holy grail of search engine results: the first link. Man. I can’t wait. First stop, geeks.com! Off we go…

GAAAAAAH! It’s hideous! Putting aside the psychotic guy in the top left whose body is being consumed by an army of green Pac-men, the site is a wreck.

When I clicked on this link, I was promised flash drives. Instead, I get whacked over the head with giant ads for laptops, mice, laser pens, and let’s not forget the tabs crammed in to the header navigation. I spent all of 10 seconds trying to figure out where I could find a selection of jump drives, or if they even offered custom jump drives before getting a headache. Bad website! Bad!

Let’s move on to the second link: lexar.com.

Ahhhh, thank you, Lexar. After geeks.com, this site is like a cool glass of water after 40 years in the desert. The first thing I see when I arrive is the nice USB Flash Drives header graphic with an attractive spread of flash drive products. The tagline beneath it isn’t bad, either: “Portable storage and backup for everyone.” *sniffs* How beautiful.

At a glance, this site boosts my consumer confidence. They prominently display the subject matter I was interested in, and they’ve put some thought in to the sales copy and layout. It answers the question “why am I here?” for me, and then gets right down to business with a clean list of USB flash drive categories they carry.

I just have one complaint. This is what happens when you click on one of the USB flash drive categories:

I had hoped to see some prices at this point. Instead, I have to continue to drill down through the site, and what I find when I get there is a moderately confusing order page. I think I’ll continue to look around a bit.

Let’s continue on to our next stop: tigerdirect.com.

Visiting this page was like being hit in the face with a pie. You don’t really get the full effect of this page with a screenshot, but basically, every ad on this page is animated in the most annoying way possible. The second you arrive, you’re being bombarded by flashing neon signs and long lists of model numbers that mean nothing to me.

*BUZZER SOUNDS* Bad site! Moving on.

We’re going to jump down a few links for our next stop: www.customjumpdrives.com

Wooooo, pretty…

I really like this site. It grabbed my attention from the get-go. Why?

Well, first of all, the tagline says is great: “Print your company logo on bulk promotional Lexar jumpdrives.” That’s EXACTLY what I wanted, and it’s not just WHAT they said, it’s HOW they said it. The header graphic uses soothing colors. They’ve manually sized and spaced the text in the tagline so that the sides are justified, and that’s hard. The font they’ve chosen has nice lines, and it’s easy to read.

Better still, they’ve got a big, fat picture of a sexy-looking jump drive with the words “your logo” imposed on it. I can’t help but imagine Aqua Vita’s logo there, dang it!

These guys know what they’re doing, if the front page is any indication, but we’re not done yet. Let’s see what a product page looks like:

Oh man. I’m in love. Not only does this page contain the pricing, they have color options, a button to get an estimate, further customization options, the ability to add this product to my cart, product details, delivery info…you want it, it’s on here.

And hey, if I’m not happy with this, no problem! They’ve got a nice photo grid of other hot-looking jump drives in the right sidebar. Gorgeous.

If there’s one fly in the ointment, it’s that clicking on a product link took me to a different site: printusb.com. I suspect this is the parent company, and they use customjumpdrives.com because of the keyword-optimized nature of the site address.

And hey, there’s a quick way to see how effective that strategy is. Let’s do another search, this time for the phrase “custom jump drives”:

Boom. By using this custom URL in their marketing, they’ve landed themselves the first AND second spots in Google search results for “custom jump drives.” Just for kicks, let’s try Yahoo!, same keywords:

Yep. They’ve got the first and second slots again.

We’ve got a clear winner here. Thank you, customjumpdrives.com. You were easy to find, easy on the eyes, and you put a lot of thought in to your customer’s experience on your website. You just earned yourself a customer.

Have a “good site / bad site” example you’d like for me to write about? Comment below! I read and appreciate each and every one of your comments.

1. Thou shalt forgo happy talk and splash pages.

Happy talk is any text on your site that fills up space without actually saying anything. For example, “Welcome to our site! We’re so glad to have you.”

Splash pages are another archaic leftover from the early days of the web. These pages feature little more than a “click here to enter” button, and, like happy talk, they do little more than take up space.

Neither of these tells the visitor anything about what your company does. They just take up valuable home page real estate. Your site should be all about the problems you can help users solve. If something doesn’t do that, cut it out.

2. Thou shalt not overclutter.

It’s tempting to throw up everything you can onto your homepage. Pictures, videos, links, audio, text, your mother’s muffin recipe…

Be careful what you do, or else your site might end up looking like this:

Scary, huh? Your website exists to serve your customers. Don’t make it impossible for them to find what they need.

Remember this little maxim: Just because you can add it doesn’t mean you should.

3. Thou shalt label thy navigational tabs.

This is what Web Pages That Suck calls “Mystery Meat Navigation,” and it is not part of good, helpful web design. Who wants to waste time clicking around on little floating squares in the hopes that the next click will lead them to the page they want? It’s more likely that they’ll just get frustrated and go back to Google to search for something easier.

Unless your site is purely aesthetic (it’s art, or fashion, and you’re not trying to get people to buy anything), give people a road map so they know where to go. Again, don’t make it impossible for people to find what they need.

4. Thou shalt not intentionally obfuscate.

To quote Strunk and White, “Since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue.”

The same can be said for design. To keep your site usable, make sure that everything is clear and to-the-point: your copy, your design, and even your offers. Don’t make people guess at what you’re trying to tell them.

Use big buttons for calls-to-action. Keep technical jargon to a minimum. Let people know what you’d like them to do next, whether it’s read the blog or sign up for the newsletter or contact you.

5. Thou shalt not overstuff thy META tags.

We’ve already gone into the deprecation of the META keyword tag, but it’s still something we see people doing: stuffing keywords into their META description, keyword, and title tags.

First, the META keyword tag is utterly unhelpful with Google now, so even if you stuff it, it’s not going to do you any good. Second, the META description and title tags are what show up in search results. If you’re searching for information about widgets, which are you going to read: the result that says “widgets, widget building, widget history, widget manufacturing,” or the result that says “Everything You Need to Know About Widgets”?

6. Thou shalt not create a site entirely in Flash.

First, it’s difficult for search engines to read Flash (not impossible, as it used to be, but more difficult if you aren’t optimizing it the right way). Second, it has a load time of forever and a day (or at least thirty seconds, which is forever and a day on the web). Third, it lends itself to the aforementioned Mystery Meat Navigation.

Unless you have a darn good reason for it, keep your site in CSS and XHTML.

7. Thou shalt keep it simple, stupid.

In four to six seconds (depending on who you ask), somebody should be able to look at your website and figure out the name of your company, what you do, and how they can buy from you. By keeping your site simple and easy to navigate, your visitors can browse around and find what they’re looking for without any unwelcome surprises.

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Tag Archives: website usability

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