Just a Click Away

Following this industry standard, established in part by e-commerce pioneer Amazon.com, can be boring for graphic designers but key to customer retention. “Think about newspapers,” Halvorson says. “The masthead with the date and issue number is at the top. The most important stories are on the front page, and the ads are inside, not on the front. No matter what city you’re in, you expect that from a newspaper.”

That’s not to say there’s no room for innovation. Dee Thibodeau recently visited a Bloomingdale’s site that was presented like a print catalog, with clearly labeled buttons for “turning” the pages. As her mouse rolled over individual pictures on the page, a balloon appeared with the product name, description, and price. She was charmed. “It’s interesting, it’s different, and it’s easy to use,” she says. “Some innovation and creativity shows that you’re ahead of the times. But innovation has to stay within boundaries. Don’t innovate so much that people don’t get it.”

Of course, the Internet is about innovation, and it’s difficult to resist trendy new technologies like Flash introduction pages, which were extremely popular about five years ago. “If there’s a purpose for them, fine,” Almquist says. “Otherwise, it is delaying people getting to your content.” Developers started getting around this problem by adding a “skip Flash” or “skip Intro” button to the screen. Now, if a Designstein client wants a Flash intro, Almquist says, the navigation tools are loaded simultaneously so that return visitors or “loyalists” can get to the content quickly.

Making a Web site usable is complicated by the array of different browsers and platforms a site must accommodate, not to mention people who are using slow dial-up connections and users with disabilities who are employing alternative technologies like screen readers to get on line. If usability is about allowing people to get what they need, then a Web site should be available to all of these users, Larson says.

“We always recommend that clients consider making their site accessible to anyone,” Almquist says. But if they determine that a very large percentage of the users come from a Windows environment and use a recent version of Internet Explorer or Firefox, they will not necessarily spend the time and money tweaking the site for Mac users and those with earlier versions of the browsers.

Accessibility is also about making your company reachable by a variety of means. Some people come to your Web site only to find a phone number or postal address. Don’t disappoint them, and don’t make that information difficult to find, Larson says.