"I got an e-mail saying that it was hard to find the widget product so I think that we need to move it to the homepage."
Of course then you have to go to back to the site, look through your notes and find the "hard to find" widget. You discover that the widget is hierarchically in a position that it should be and that the three-click rule applies. You respond, "has anyone else seem to be having problems finding products?" The response, "no, but they could be because this person did."
You go onto the site, look at the logs and statistics, see steady traffic, and then realize you now are hit with yet another way to save a client from making a mistake.
This scenario happens more times than I would like, but it is a necessary evil. Since the client hired you with the idea that you were in charge of making the site useable for the Internet masses, you cannot blame them for wanting to jump every time they hear about a complaint. After all, this is their site and, in a lot of cases, their livelihood. The problem, you can't be responsible for everyone, you can only be responsible for the majority of users.
There are always going to be users who are technologically inept and just have a hard time doing anything on the Internet. I have taught 'Introduction to Computers' many a semester and I have seen people with absolutely no clue of what they are doing with a computer. And when I say no clue, I mean rubbing the mouse on the monitor. Inept users are inevitable and it isn't possible to design for all of them, especially since they will be inept in their own unique way. It is possible, however, to keep the client from leaping every time they may receive a message stating that something is too hard for them to use.
There are some key components that I use to keep them from jumping at every little complaint - the most important and effective being the traffic logs. If the site is getting a steady stream of traffic and products are selling, then one comment shouldn't deter that and force a redesign. On top of that, I make it a point to explain that making a drastic change may make finding a certain product easy for this particular person but may open up to complains from dozens of others (probably those who actually know HOW to use the Internet).
That being said, if the traffic is nonexistent or the client has received numerous e-mails (and the site has been around awhile), it may be worth taking the time to reevaluate the navigation to make sure that the audience is less tech savvy than you originally anticipated. As I talked about in my post, Making a Web site’s Navigation Bar – Concepts to Keep in Mind, the first step in making a new site is figuring out the audience and making the navigation and the layout work for that audience. Double-check that the client's site is bringing the type of traffic you thought. As I stated in the aforementioned post, it is ok to make a navigation bar a bit more sophisticated if you feel that the users would have a greater level of technological knowhow. If the site in question is one of those cases, you may have had too much faith in the audience.
I also recommend explaining early in the process that you are never going to satisfy every user on the Web. As I have stated in several posts, Web design is one of the few artistic forms that everyone feels that they know what is good design and what is not. You are always going to get conflicting opinions and can't jump the gun every single time someone disagrees with the way that site is layed out.
Explain that other sites do not jump every time a user challenges the site's design. Think if Facebook or MapQuest jumped every time a user complained about the User Interface or the design of the site, we would have new redesigns daily. Again, it goes back to playing to the masses.
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