As website designers, our first job is to work out why people will visit the Web site we are designing. The second is to work out how their experience can be made so positive, even enjoyable, that they do what the website owner wants them to do.
I recently signed up for a local business directory. Since I am using it as an example of what not to do, and since the people who run it are such nice people, I won’t name it. When I looked at my entry I saw the word Website, but no website address. Also the word Email, but no email address. I wrote to the directory to protest.
Before they wrote back (actually, they haven’t written back yet) I checked my entry again. Then I thought, ‘Maybe the bare names are links.’ And so they are. By clicking on the word Website you can go to the Web site. Click on the word Email and you can compose an email.
So I was being stupid, right? You can make up your own mind on that. The important point is that it is the job of the communicator to communicate. If a Web site doesn’t communicate, to every relevant visitor, it fails. Here, the bare words were not enough to communicate that there was hidden information. There was no underline to indicate a link, and in 2009 no colour is enough. (Check out my earlier posts about links.) As it turns out, there’s even a tool tip—but you’d have to move your mouse to the words to find that out. So this is rule 8.
8. Be 100% obvious.
And 100% means 100%. Everything a website visitor can do must be crystal clear. All information must be up front and visible. There are plenty of ways of making even an email address visible to human visitors without its being visible to spambots. And if you hide it, you must say so, in an obvious place that a human scanning the page will see at a glance.
If a website visitor has to guess or work out what to do, the Web site is not 100% obvious. If a website visitor has to do something off their own bat to find information that is on the page, the Web site is not 100% obvious. Remember, 100% is 100%: 99% won’t do.
