Originally published on Memeburn.com
South African websites repeatedly make basic usability mistakes. The results: frustrated customers, negative brand impact, reduced online sales, and poor return on investment for the whole web project.
The best advice for making an impact online is to Zig when others Zag. Stand out. Be amazing. Give a shit.
But if you work for a South African corporation, I’m sure you’ll feel much more comfortable following the herd. So here are five instructions for making sure your ecommerce site delivers industry-standard quantities of pain and frustration.
1. Let the programmers write the copy
Here’s an error message Flow discovered during a usability test for MWEB. If you choose the wrong kind of password, you get a message that says:
Oops indeed…
This kind of language is fine for programmers, but there are a lot of people who might want to buy an internet connection but are not sure what the word “alphanumeric” means.
So how about, “Please make sure there are both letters and numbers in the password you choose, to improve your online security.” Surely more people will understand what that means?
Usability recommendation for the inspired: You won’t ask a copywriter to program JavaScript. So don’t ask the programmers to write the copy.
2. Help users to lose their work (and their tempers)
Continue reading “How to lose customers and alienate people”