{"id":30316,"date":"2009-10-28T19:00:41","date_gmt":"2009-10-28T18:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/blog\/?p=30316"},"modified":"2009-10-25T19:01:44","modified_gmt":"2009-10-25T18:01:44","slug":"unfortunate-user-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/unfortunate-user-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Down the Garden Path:  Anatomy of an Unfortunate User Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pqRight\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Obstacle-Course.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-30317 lazyload\" title=\"Obstacle Course\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Obstacle-Course-300x217.jpg\" alt=\"Obstacle Course\" width=\"300\" height=\"217\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Obstacle-Course-300x217.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Obstacle-Course-150x108.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Obstacle-Course.jpg 600w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/217;\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>I recently took a rather twisty trip through the website of a \u201cmembership organization, think tank and educational resource.\u201d\u00a0 I was trying to access a report, \u00a0and since I do that sort of thing a lot\u2014for an assortment of different topics I write about&#8211; I\u2019m pretty accustomed to the various strategies utilized to extract (a) information about me, and (b) money from me.\u00a0 But some extra challenges made this attempt worth a post.<\/p>\n<p>The following comments are not about this particular organization, which is not only respectable but also provides value.\u00a0 It&#8217;s just that their website offers an excellent example of the \u201cunfortunate user experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what happened:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I went through the registration process in order to access a specific report.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t surprised when it turned out (many screens later) that the report itself wasn\u2019t accessible under the \u201cfree\u201d membership level. <\/li>\n<li>But I persisted, and it turned out that a briefing-style version of the report <em>is<\/em> in fact free.\u00a0 Actually, there are several kinds of free content available on the site, some of it high-value.\u00a0 But!\u00a0 You don\u2019t know this until you try accessing a variety of items, and occasionally stumble on something you can view without charge. <\/li>\n<li>For some types of free content, including the briefing I was trying to see, you still have to put the item in a \u201ccart\u201d and go through a \u201ccheck-out\u201d process.\u00a0 There\u2019s no charge, but every time you \u201cbuy\u201d a free content item, the system sends you an email confirming the \u201cpurchase.\u201d\u00a0 And of course you are offered frequent opportunities to \u201cupgrade\u201d your membership.<\/li>\n<li>Finally (although I could go on for much longer), the briefing turned out to be in slide format.\u00a0 Not a problem in itself, but the page is arranged so awkwardly (due to a humongous&#8211;yet pointless!&#8211;banner at the top) that you have to scroll far down even to see the slide.\u00a0 And you have to do that for EVERY SLIDE, because the slideshow does not play automatically.\u00a0 The slide display is a fixed size (quite large), which means you have to scroll down even further after viewing a slide in order to see the notes (which contain most of the information).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now here\u2019s why all that is important\u2014and relevant.\u00a0 This website committed several offenses against the user, and the organization lost brand credibility in the process.\u00a0 Notably:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Expectations violation.<\/strong> At the beginning I thought of the organization as an information resource, but by the end of my visit, I thought of it mainly as marketing machine.\u00a0 And a dysfunctional one, at that.\u00a0 Did I mention that the \u201cnew member orientation\u201d slideshow did not work?<\/li>\n<li><strong>2. <\/strong><strong>Unnecessary inconvenience. <\/strong>And did I mention that every single thing you do on this site results in opening a new tab?\u00a0 (At least in Firefox\u2014didn\u2019t test in IE.)\u00a0 In trying to register and access just one report, I ended up with about a dozen tabs.\u00a0 And that\u2019s only a single example from a series of challenges encountered during the visit.\u00a0 Each was relatively minor in itself, but they added up to a significant level of aggravation.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mixed messaging. <\/strong>By the end of my visit I had been exposed to many labels, logos, and taglines, but had no idea about the actual purpose of the organization.\u00a0 Every page I visited delivered a different message\u2014and returning to the home page provided no help.\u00a0 It is so crammed with links (including literally <em>dozens<\/em> of sponsor badges) and things to buy or sign up for that I still cannot tell you what their essential value proposition(s) is\/are.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Your company\u2019s Careers site is probably not in danger of seeming too much like a store.\u00a0 But it may well be violating expectations in other ways, as well as causing unnecessary inconvenience and delivering mixed messages.\u00a0 \u00a0Those failings won\u2019t deter people who need a job from searching the posted openings.\u00a0 However, they <em>will <\/em>be a discouragement for quality candidates in search of career opportunities with a quality company.<\/p>\n<p>The site I\u2019ve been critiquing actually had some very good information to offer, once I figured out how to work the system.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll visit again\u2014but I won\u2019t look forward to it.<\/p>\n<p><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(The illustration is a plan view of the garden at Chateau de Choisy, a seventeenth-century French palace.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently took a rather twisty trip through the website of a \u201cmembership organization, think tank and educational resource.\u201d\u00a0 I was trying to access a report, \u00a0and since I do that sort of thing a lot\u2014for an assortment of different topics I write about&#8211; I\u2019m pretty accustomed to the various strategies utilized to extract (a) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,25],"tags":[41,5960],"class_list":{"0":"post-30316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-best-practices","8":"category-careers","9":"tag-corporate-website","10":"tag-user-experience","11":"entry"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Down the Garden Path: Anatomy of an Unfortunate User Experience - Corporate Eye<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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