When you visit a website and can’t immediately find what you’re looking for, that site has pretty much failed. Attention spans are so short – we’ve all become so used to being spoon-fed information – that unless the UX (User Experience) is very easy and clear, site visitors will quickly look elsewhere.
(Hopefully you found this blog easily enough…)
I recently used a couple of sites I won’t name that I found frustrating. Booking cinema tickets for example: ‘We’re showing these films’. Then a button next to each one that says [BOOK NOW]. There… you’d think it was simple right? Seems not.
Some website developers are not trained in graphic design and things like like visual hierarchy, typography, editing, and strong layout can get lost in the technical aspects of making a site actually function… Java-script… back-end coding etc. Which is fair enough I suppose. But that’s why I work alongside web developers who do their thing, and I do mine – together hopefully to create sites that look good but importantly work well for the user.
Steve Krug’s famous (almost legendary) book ‘Don’t Make Me Think‘ is important reading for anyone interested in web User Experience and contains some really useful pointers – and how to avoid some common mistakes.
Here’s more about it.