Stupid Usability FAIL!
Ok, I know I have been neglecting this blog for a long time. Thats because most of my technical rantings have moved to Fliquid Studios. But, I needed to share one of the most ridiculous usability failures I have ever experienced.
Today I was searching for a simple tank volume calculator to work out how many US Gallons my fish tank is (179 for those interested), so I made a quick search on Google and then clicked on the second result. Well, the page loaded and then a javascript alert popped up saying "The Lightnin Tank Volume Calculator currently supports Netscape Navigator 6 and Internet Explorer 5." which wasn't too bad but then by clicking yes, sent me back to my Google results! So, basically they are saying that because I don't use IE5 (released in 1999!!!) or Netscape 6 (released 2002) and that Firefox only accounts for 20% of the browsing market share, I cannot view the page. Of course, I could disable javascript but why? If they don't want me on their site then that's up to them, but I can't see how they still have the 2nd spot in Google with this stupid approach to web development.
</rant>
Will the internet work for your business?
The short answer is no. The internet will not do everything for you. It will not work for you.
You will only get out of the internet what you want to and it will be directly related to how much you put into it.
Businesses consistently believe that by simply having a site with products and / or services on it that suddenly their sales will increase and this, for the most part, is simply untrue.
In Australia, the e-boom is taking a lot longer to gain momentum in comparison with America. Australian businesses simply do not consider the internet to be a vital marketing resource and are unwilling to invest into it. This causes a lot of businesses to do more damage to their brand image than good.
If you come across two websites with the same product or service and the first website is professionally designed with a good logo, easy navigation and fully functional, you will likely pick that business over the one that has a site that looks like it was designed by the neighbours 10 year old for his school project. In fewer words, cheap looking sites make the company look unprofessional, also, cheap looking sites do not build confidence with visitors who are being offered products to purchase online.
In addition to this is the lack of time being invested into email correspondence. Whether you like it or not, most communication derived from your website will be email. Its easy, its fast and people can use it in their own time. The problem with this is the amount of businesses that do not treat emails with any sufficient level of priority. Emails go unanswered. A lot. People get frustrated and angry and your brand damage continues to grow. Its not a bad thing to only offer phone details on your site if thats the only method of contact you are willing to accept. Fewer potential customers will contact you, but thats better than more potential customers going unanswered via email.
Small business in Australia need to get out of the mentality that the internet will be everything to them and all they need is a 'presence'. There is a very new feeling the the net these days and as much as I hate using buzz words, its 'web 2.0' and because of 'web 2.0' there is this new surge of competition in both design/development and site owning businesses to outdo each other. Simply, if you cannot devote them time and money required into your 'web 2.0' presence, stay offline. You will do less damage.
Web services that dont work. My #1 frustration
I can understand when things are in a public beta stage and are still going through testing, that things may not work. But, when a web application has been launched and there is no trace of ‘Beta’ or ‘testing’ anywhere on the site or service then you’d expect things to work ok and in this age of extremely competitive sites and services, it is simply unacceptable when they dont work as required.
Today, I decided that I needed some ‘Bookmark this’ buttons at the bottom of my posts as I have implemented on Skylines Australia.
So, as my blog is with Blogger, I thought there must be a widget or a pre-written piece of code out there to do it for me. I came across Sharethis and Addthis.
Sharethis
I registered at Sharethis and I filled out the form for my blogger button and I followed the prompts to put the widget on my blog and impatiently hit ‘save’, excited about this new addition, I refreshed the blog to be presented with this;
1. A new side widget with nothing in it. 
2. A link underneath my posts that does nothing (because of javascript errors) 
So, that was it for Sharethis. It had already wasted too much of my time.
Addthis
So the next thing to try was Addthis. Their site looked nice and to be honest, the button looked nicer and more functional than the Sharethis equivalent. So, I thought I would give it a go and register. 
This was what I was presented with after registering. No disabling of the form before putting your details in, or even a nice notification page (this is all that was on the page, just some centred text). My registration still went through as gmail was quick to notify me of the successful Addthis registration.
Maybe I just need to stop being lazy. Its not a hard thing to add to the posts and it’d only take me 30mins or so to whip something up. But after these two dismal attempts at attracting me as a user on their sites, I started to think of other sites that constantly irritate me.
Shelfari
This is actually a fairly good site. I do use it and I generally like it. But their search engine is attrocious. What respectful web site in the 21st century has a crap search? None. Searching and indexing has advanced so much in the past 10 years that there is simply no excuse for bad search engines. This site constantly makes me use the advanced search to put everything in to find a book. eg. Searching for ‘A year in tibet’ gives me a crap load of books, mainly about the lord of the rings. But if I go to the advanced search and put in the title and author, I get the book I was searching for which has the exact name I was searching for. Not to mention on this site how you can mark a book as ‘Plan to read’ and then next time you come back, its set to ‘Already read’ and ‘I own this book’… Not sure what happens between visits but I dont read that quickly.
Blackout Rugby
This site is a great online Rugby game. FYI, I love rugby. I bought a team-signed Waratahs jersey on Saturday night. Thats beside the point. This game is great, but lacks the finesse of something with more time under its belt. For example, up until a few months ago, the site used a flash-only navigation. This meant that if I logged in on my 64Bit Fedora machine (with no flash support), I had to try to guess the URL of the pages I wanted, which also lead me to a big fat SQL error (and likely, an injection opportunity which I promptly notified them about). They have now implemented a fall back navigation menu for no flash support. The other area this site falls over is in stability. The site has been down so much over the past month (maybe 5 days at least) due to them moving hosts twice. When you are charging money for a ‘premium’ membership, this is simply not good enough. You cannot expect to grow your user base when you take usability so lightly.
In conclusion
Web site owners and operators need to realise that if their product does not work, they will lose their users. It is that simple. If something doesn’t work, the user will go elsewhere. If something isn’t accessible, the user will go elsewhere. If something is too complicated, the user will go elsewhere. With the level of competition and new-and-improved up-and-comers in all areas of the internet, its never been more important to ensure that your service works. Even if it means removing functionality to ensure that the core of the system is as bug-free as possible. Or just stamp a ‘Beta’ on it.