Don’t make your users wait - ever
Posted on April 17, 2008 by Chris
I was on a couple of review sites today (among the list were PriceGrabber, Epinions and my3cents) to do some additional research on yesterday’s post on the long term validity of online reviews and I was a bit surprised about how poor the user experience is on these sites. I mean, some of these sites have been around since the mid 1990s and should have figured it out by now.
Specifically I tried to post reviews on all three sites and actually was unable to do so. The problems I ran into fall into a number of categories but all all killers from a user experience perspective:
1) It was not possible to sign up. Either I had registered previously and forgotten my password or the sign up process employed not only a captcha but also an email confirmation link (which in two cases never showed up). It seems to avoid bots, many sites are putting so many hoops in front of a new user that it becomes nearly impossible to register. If newly registered users are your lifeblood this is really bad! Make it easy - two clicks max with immediate feedback.
2) I could not change my public profile nickname. On one site I first registered in 2001 and sometime since then the site had adopted the user ID I created back then as my public profile nickname. When I went to change it I could not and as a result didn’t bother to post a review.
3) I entered a review and it went into the void - no confirmation, no summary and nothing in my profile. Feedback is critical to make sure that your users know you value their input and the faster the better.
With the massive number of new sites vying for attention, it is absolutely critical that your site be simple and straightforward to use and that the registration process be seamless. The review sites I looked at above failed miserably in this area.
Sphere: Related Content» Filed Under User Centric Design
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