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Web Usability and enticing members
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Web Usability and enticing members
#1Moon's post about a membership drive got me thinking. I think getting visitors is a big part...but I think the overall design of the site has turned into a behemoth that is difficult to control. I think it is fine once you get to the post, but all the navigation of the site needs a redesign to make it easer to navigate and not so overwhelming to find/browse stuff. I think if the design was easier and more user friendly, that would go a long way to adding new members. We get lots of visitors...we need to make the site a place they can get comfortable in quick!
I am reading (rereading) a book called "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. It is a book on web useability. In every chapter he makes an outstanding point that really hits home and I need somewhere to put the thoughts to help solidify them in my brain a little so I use the fickin things. Great to read good advice, an entire other thing to actually use said advice!
Eliminate the questions.
A person should not have to think or wonder what is going on. It should be obvious. Better to use more common practices/terms that something obscure. His example is that the simple "Jobs" is much better than "Empoyment Opportunities" or something themey like "Job-o-rama."
This makes me think of scrolls and codices. They are fine but I need to do a better job explaining them. Need something very dummy proof to show what they are. I keep building and building and ignore documentation...the bane of a coder but something incredibly necessary. It can't just be documentation though, it has to be like a strolen site for dummies type thing where it is easy and quick to understand.
Fact 1 - People don't read pages, they scan them for something familiar.
This one hit me in the nuts. There is an illustration of the website where most of it is blurred except a few key links and a couple smaller type graphics. When I go to my index of the main site....that entire page is a blur to me. There is nothing on it that catches the eye and directs it. There is waaay too much text.
The index needs a slimmed down more eye appealing design...and I sort of suck at that. I like the style of http://arstechnica.com/index.ars as it is busy with a lot of information but there are defineable areas that, once established, you know where to look for stuff. I started a design based on it but canned it for some reason.
Fact 2 - People don't make optimal choices they satifice.
Satifice is a word that means that the first reasonable option they find, the choose. On the webpage, the first thing that looks interesting on the page, they click. They don't read the entire page and then make a decision waying all the options, they scan until they find something interesting and click and don't worry about the rest, they can go back if they like what the see. This highlights, again, that we need to provide eye drawing defineable sections that allow the eye to get caught by something distinctive vs. a huge page of titles and summaries.
This, again, goes back to design which I suck at.
Fact 3 - People don't figure out how things work, they muddle through them.
I sure don't read the instructions and won't on most any site. I will experiment with them and see what happens. We have seen that on this site too, people have no idea there are some features available until somebody points them out. I don't blame them a bit and the complexity of the site is a negative. People just don't care about all the cool features when they just want to throw up a submission. Why should they care about scrolls and codices and other more advanced options.
Need to take a deep look at how easy it is to do stuff and try to dummy proof it again. Would average joe first time user be able to figure out how to submit something the first time? Maybe that is part of the reason that many have apprehension on their first submission, there are a lot of choices to make and they have to read and understand before they can use them. This is probably a problem!