Good experience is not a new idea

I just read David Armano’s post “Experience, Social, Word of Mouth. Is it All Just Advertising?” on the “Experience Matters” blog. Once again, an excellent post, but this time I was struck by one of the comments.

David Cushman wrote:

good customer exp, whether delivered by human or device, is all it takes to delight us into becoming advocates in a world sadly lacking in said good exps. but brands will learn and then we’ll take what delights us for granted. would the cycle start over i wonder?

I agree with the first part. Whatever tricks or techniques may be used to establish branding for a business, product, or service, the most effective approach is to simply provide a good experience. Or is it not that simple? All businesses talk about it, but as Mr. Cushman notes, a good customer experience is still rare and still notable when it happens.

However, he then goes on to say, “brands will learn”, and unfortunately that’s where I disagree. Doing the right thing is not a new idea — oh wow, look at this, why didn’t we ever think of it before? — something we’ve just discovered and now all businesses will be jumping on the bandwagon. If there’s any bandwagon, it’s the one businesses have already jumped on where they all talk about customer service, and quality products, and providing a good experience, and “your call is important to us.” Too bad they don’t get off the wagon and do something. I do not foresee the day when “we’ll take what delights us for granted.”

Excellent news, I suppose, for any business that does know how to provide a good experience.

Or do most of us really know how, and the magic is in caring enough to actually do it?

Hiding from actual contact

In my previous post I wrote about information missing from a website, or at least very difficult to find. The information was absolutely crucial to the organization and to the users of the website. It was missing not so much because the information wasn’t important, but because the website owners assumed that everyone already knew the answer.

Their mistake. Not only did I not know the answer, but the first person I asked, and who gave me the correct information, later began to wonder and went to the same website to (try to) confirm what he’d told me.

That was unfortunate, and probably not all that uncommon. After all, a similar website in a different country also managed to hide the same information four levels deep.

But there are a great many sites that leave out or obscure important information, and sometimes it seems to happen on purpose. All too often the hidden information is the very reason users have come to the site in the first place.

How to contact the business. Phone numbers. Email addresses. Contact forms.

It’s a simple question of usability. I would guess that contact information is one of the most common reasons people visit a website. As such, a link to contact info should be clearly provided up front—ideally near the top of the home page. Sort of a sincere way of saying, “Your visit is important to us and if you want to get in touch, damn it, we want to hear from you.”

In reality, what happens? If a company doesn’t already have your business, they make it easy to contact them. Links, phone numbers, forms, whatever you want. On the other hand, if it’s a situation where the company is likely to already have your business or they’ve already sold you their product, well, it’s perhaps not quite as important and so maybe you have to jump through some hoops.

That’s the way it is on many sites and we’ve all run into the problem. And as lowly consumers there may not be a great deal we can do about it.

Except this—be aware, be very aware that businesses do give at least some thought to their websites and if easy and useful contact information is not clearly provided, it’s because the business designed it that way. A conscious decision was made.

When is Tax Day?

Everybody makes assumptions. But sometimes you’d think they’d know better.

Of course, I might be the only person who isn’t already sure of the answer, but what do you do if you want to confirm when your income tax return has to be filed? I’m a Canadian who has been living and working in the United States for several years. The only thing I was fairly certain of was that the deadline for filing taxes is different in the two countries. April 15th rang a bell, but was the bell Canadian or American?

IRS Home Page - Where’s the due date?I asked a co-worker. He said April 15th. Sounded good, but when it comes to getting your taxes done, it’s good to be paranoid—especially if you’re an “alien”. No problem. I went to the IRS website, thinking that the due date would appear prominently on the home page.

No.

The home page does tell me that “Form 4136-Fuels Credit… Farmers, Fishermen can e-file and pay between March 3-10″. Good to know, but there’s not even a link on the page that offers an obvious path to the answer I’m looking for. I.e., there’s no FAQ link and the “Help” page really wasn’t any help. There is a link to “Individuals” but I don’t see anything helpful there either.

To be absolutely fair I checked the equivalent site in Canada—The Canada Revenue Agency. I would be happy to report that they have the relevant date front and centre, but no such luck. I had to go from the home page to “All about your tax return” to “Important dates for 2007 (Individuals)” to “Filing due dates for the 2007 tax return”.

Back to the US. On the IRS site I finally found the “Due Date/Deadline” page in the “Frequently Asked Tax Questions And Answers”. Even there, believe it or not, there was no clear answer to my question. The closest they came was the statement more than halfway down the page that “Some forms and entities have due dates other than the well-known April 15th due date.”

In the end I went to Wikipedia and entered “tax day” in the search box. There I learn that “Tax Day is the common American slang term for the day that income taxes are due from most employed American residents, usually April 15th.”

Thank God for Wikipedia. Unless you’re wondering about Canada’s tax day (it’s April 30th).

But tell me—why does it so rarely seem to occur to anyone in government, or to anyone in business, to wonder (a) what are the very basic questions people want answered and (b) can we make sure to provide the answer on the home page or at least show what should be a clear path to the answer?

My co-worker who told me the American due date was April 15th? He was right, but then he started to wonder and he too went to the IRS site. And didn’t find the answer.

Usability is a moving target

They are two of the Big Names in online usability—Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug.

I wrote that sentence and then asked myself if there were others who should be considered on the same level. I wasn’t sure. I went to Amazon.com and searched for books on “usability”. The top two results:

I’ve read Krug’s book at least twice, maybe three times. It’s not just informative and packed with good advice; it’s easy and actually fun to read. I’ve learned a great deal from Nielsen’s website over the years, and I’m sure there’s still an awful lot I’ve missed. These guys are real experts and argue persistently for techniques of keeping websites easy to use. Because… a site that’s easy to use is an effective site.

I won’t argue with that.

But then it just so happened that I visited their websites on the same day. Go ahead, take a quick look (but don’t forget to come back):

Those are two butt-ugly sites. You have to ask yourself—does an effective site have to look like that? Or have users evolved over the past decade to the point where we can identify a link even if it’s not blue and underlined? Further, could it be that an attractive design actually makes a site more usable? Let’s say you have a user who doesn’t know who these guys are and this user opens one of these sites. Do you suppose that user might just think, “Whoa, what a crude and ugly site. So 1990s. Can I really count on good advice from someone who can’t do a better job than this?”

Nowadays you can expect visitors to your site to be more sophisticated, and probably more demanding when it comes to design. Usability evolves with the users and we have to keep up.