I\u2019m not in mar\u00adket\u00ading, so I\u2019m not going to pon\u00adti\u00adfic\u00adate on how com\u00adpan\u00adies should design the look and feel of their web\u00adsites, nor on what they should say on their web\u00adsites. But there are some really basic things that com\u00adpan\u00adies should do to make their web\u00adsites more usable, at least to a first degree. <\/p>\n
Item 1: don\u2019t make your cus\u00adtom\u00aders tell you where they live until they need to, nor what sort of ser\u00advices they\u2019re inter\u00adested in. Case study: Rogers, a pur\u00advey\u00ador of wire\u00adless phones and oth\u00ader tele\u00adcom ser\u00advices. The first screen you see at rogers.com makes you choose between res\u00adid\u00aden\u00adtial and busi\u00adness ser\u00advices. If you click busi\u00adness, it assumes you live in Ontario. If you click res\u00adid\u00aden\u00adtial, you then have to tell it which province you live in. Every time I pay my wire\u00adless bill online, I have to go through the same rig\u00admar\u00adole. Can\u00ad\u2019t they fig\u00adure out some way of giv\u00ading people the basic inform\u00ada\u00adtion and then let\u00adting them choose which sub\u00adset of the site they want? Telus (anoth\u00ader telco) does the same thing, you have to tell them which province you live in before being allowed into the site. Bell Canada (a com\u00adpet\u00adit\u00ador) does this bet\u00adter. Not per\u00adfect, they have this weird dia\u00adlog box float\u00ading in space, but it\u2019s bet\u00adter. The login for people with accounts who want to pay them quickly is right there on the first page, unlike for Telus or Rogers. Maybe they should spend five minutes some time and fig\u00adure out who uses their sites? Or make their exec\u00adut\u00adives try to pay their own phone bills online?<\/p>\n
Item 2: assume that some people will be lazy, and not want to type the \u201cwww.\u201d all the time. Case study: Shop\u00adpers Drug Mart, a Cana\u00addian drugstore\/pharmacy. If you go to www.shoppersdrugmart.com, you get to the site. If you type shoppersdrugmart.com into your browser, you get \u201cUnable to con\u00adnect\u201d as the serv\u00ader rejects the con\u00adnec\u00adtion. This strikes me as bizarre and lazy; it\u2019s not that hard to set up a serv\u00ader to accept both types of address, and user-unfriendly to not do so.<\/p>\n
Item 3: if you run a store, set\u00adting up a web site, advert\u00adising it, and then put\u00adting no con\u00adtent on it is a waste of time. If you can\u00ad\u2019t think of any\u00adthing else to put on your web site, put your phone num\u00adber, your loc\u00ada\u00adtion, and your open\u00ading hours. A few words about products and\/or ser\u00advices you provide would\u00adn\u2019t hurt either. Case study: too many, and they all make me won\u00adder why they bothered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m not in mar\u00adket\u00ading, so I\u2019m not going to pon\u00adti\u00adfic\u00adate on how com\u00adpan\u00adies should design the look and feel of their web\u00adsites, nor on what they should say on their web\u00adsites. But there are some really basic things that com\u00adpan\u00adies should do to make their web\u00adsites more usable, at least to a first degree. Item \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cCom\u00adpany Web\u00adsites 101\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}