Web Site Frustration

Yesterday I urgently needed to buy software and found a list of a dozen Web sites which offered it. Thinking that I could easily find what I wanted from the first few sites, I began opening them. The first one had a bunch of text offering articles and advice on the home page. After a couple of clicks, I could not find where to buy the software or if the site even had it for sale. I moved on to the second site. Again, the home page had a great deal of text and no easy way to find the software which they supposedly were selling. With agitation building, I moved on to the third site. I found the same situation.

“What are these businesses doing?” I said aloud. “Don’t they want to sell this software?”

Needing the software badly, I plowed through sites four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten, all with the same results. Finally, number eleven, the next-to-the-last one, clearly displayed the software on the home page. To end my frustration and move forward, I bought the software from that site without checking out site number twelve.

This is my biggest complaint about Web sites. As a customer, I have difficulty finding what I want. I quickly become frustrated, give up, and move on. As a marketer, I have thought this through and realize why this happens. Do you know?

Web sites that frustrate customers were not created from the customer’s point of view.

Instead of sitting down, talking to customers, asking what they want, and giving it to them, some person or persons at the business and/or the Web site development company met and decided what to put on the Web site. They started with a blank sheet of paper as to what to include. That was followed by blank minds and then blank stares. “What should we include on our Web site?” someone questioned.

“I have no idea,” replied someone else. “What do you suggest, Tom? You are the Web site guy.”

Tom swiftly brought up a Web site for a similar business on his laptop. “Well, for businesses such as yours we typically do this.”

You may find this difficult to swallow, but a conversation similar to this one takes place at the inception of most Web sites. It must. The fact that I found ten Web sites which had a similar format and did not make it easy to find the software proves my point.

Instead of finding out why the customer would use the site and what the customer wants to find at the site, a committee applies what the members think should go on the site. However pretty or cool the site, their efforts are for naught if the site doesn’t work for the customer.

I read that a Web site’s home page ought to feature the three main reasons someone would visit the site. Each of these should be short and linked to a landing page regarding that subject. The landing page would give additional information on the subject with links to more pages as applicable. If this concept were applied to the sites that I visited looking for that software, each would have had on the home page a link to the software landing page. This link would have been easy to see, not hidden in a bunch of text. That would have developed the Web site from the customer’s point of view. A site such as that would be very effective.

Take a look at your company’s Web site. Are the three main reasons that a customer goes to your site easy to find on the home page? Do you know these three main reasons?

If not, ask your customers.