Over the past few months I’ve noticed a disturbing trend, sites are becoming less usable — only appealing to a specific segment of their audience. Marketers are so consumed with creating “brand” and “experience” that they risk creating a frustrating experience for those not considered. While tools such as Flash and Silverlight allow designers and marketers a seemingly unrestricted canvas, unfortunately usability often becomes a secondary concern.
Case in point: I recently went to Spalding.com to search for a basketball hoop. I saw some great Flash animation – it was interesting and helped emphasize their brand attributes. When clicking through to their residential portable systems though, I was presented with only “The Beast” – their $1200 system. Interesting, but what about their other products? They don’t list them. Looking for a search box, I couldn’t find that either. There is no way to learn more about their products. I left frustrated.
What is the solution?
- Understand who is coming to your site, their goals, needs and behaviors, and build usable experiences for those constituents
How?
- Research the market by conducting qualitative interviews with key constituents and follow up with a robust quantitative survey
- Statistically segment the market into the constituents’ behavioral patterns
- Define primary and secondary personas to articulate the human qualities evident within the segments
- Create experiences for each primary persona
Done properly, this type of process takes approximately 15-25 weeks. It’s an investment that will pay dividends both in the short run and long run.
For Spalding, simply considering that some people want to research products beyond retailer’s descriptions may be important. Or perhaps you want to learn more about the company, key executives, etc. Or maybe you want a job. I couldn’t find any of these. [For full disclosure, they may be there, but it took too long to try to figure it out, so I stopped.]
