This comes compliments of an article written on Search Engine Watch yesterday. I find this list humerous but also spot on when considering the building of your website. For other ideas and tips, visit our web site design page.
- Don’t make your shopping pages secure. If I want to back up with the back arrow, let me see the page, not an error telling me the content has expired. Secure pages are for buying, not shopping.
- Don’t make me fill out 30 fields in a form to buy a $10 t-shirt. You need the basic info required to process my credit card, not four phone numbers and a username and password.
- Speaking of passwords, don’t require me to sign up for your site. I can’t remember the passwords I already have. If I just want to buy, let me buy — don’t make me join.
- Don’t make me enter my credit card number to see the full price with tax and shipping. I want to know the total cost before I decide to buy.
- If I’m shopping and accidentally leave your site, let me go back and see what was in my shopping cart or bag without signing in. You can do this with cookies.
- People shop at work — don’t put music on your site.
- If it’s on sale, tell me the price. Don’t tell me to put the item in my shopping cart to see the price.
- Navigation that drops down and flies out is a pain. If I have to try three times to get the cursor on the navigation item I want, I’m going to look elsewhere.
- The more products you sell, the clearer your navigation and sell message needs to be. Don’t jumble everything together
- If I sort my query into cost order, don’t make me resort by cost order after the next search.
- If I have to download an ActiveX control or a Flash update to see your site or products, chances are I’ll leave.
- If I have to give you my e-mail address, don’t abuse it. An e-mail once in a while is fine; an e-mail every day is annoying. Also, don’t sell it — it’s mine.
- Menus and price lists that are PDFs don’t always load nicely. If it’s worth being on your site, it’s worth being a regular Web page.
- If I click a link and view that page, make that link change color so I know where I’ve been.
- Script or cutesy fonts are hard to read. Don’t make me suffer to learn what you have to offer.
- White text on a dark background is hard to read. Don’t do it.
- Blinking banners, words, lights, buttons, etc. are best left in the ’90s.
- I use Firefox, but most don’t — make sure your site resolves in multiple browsers.
- If I click to enlarge a photo, make it a bigger photo — not the same image in a popup window.
- I’m buying something, so show me what it is. Not an illustration or a product in a different color.
