Simon van Wyk

In the early days of the Internet, executives could throw their hands up and plead ignorance at how this new technology was supposed to work. But the blame for bad user design can no longer be laid at the feet of the graphic designers and programmers. Marketing and management need to take their share of responsibility for making websites work.

They can start shouldering that responsibility by doing their homework and looking at what works out there at the moment – and what doesn’t

Forrester Research in the US, for example, has conducted more than 375 website reviews since 2000, so they have a pretty good idea by now of what works on the Internet. The view from their angle isn't pretty.

The reviews consist of examining websites across 25 different site characteristics and assigning a score of +2 to -2 for each element, which means a maximum possible score of +50.

But the average across those 375 reviews is -1.5, a score that Forrester analyst Bruce Temkin describes as "pitiful". The highest score was +26 and the lowest was -30, with 60% averaging less than zero and 25% averaging less than -8. "What do these dismal grades mean?" Temkin asks. "Lost sales and failed self-service as frustrated users hit usability roadblocks."

Forrester found that retailers are doing best (average +3.1) and telecommunication companies the worst (average -5.6), with auto and consumer goods sites only slightly in front of them.

In a recurrent theme for user design studies, the most common problem identified from these reviews is poor search, with 78% of firms not providing adequate search results.

Forrester also applied those 25 criteria to 20 mainstream sites to produce a report called “The Best and Worst of Site Design 2003”. Scores for the automotive, media, retail and travel sites it reviewed ranged from one online retailer at +30 down to an automotive company at -10.

A “passing grade” for all tests (+1) would result in a grade of at least +25. Eighteen of the 20 sites failed, with only (Lands' End and L.L. Bean) scoring high enough. Even the best sites “had troubling flaws”, according to Forrester, particularly in the areas of search (again) and accessibility. "Basic errors reveal the immature state of web design," the report concluded.

Usability is everybody's business

Pressure to deliver a return on investment (ROI) on corporate websites means that marketers need to share the responsibility for good site design.

Most corporate websites are still built more around a company's priorities than what users actually need. As a result, they don’t deliver for users, resulting in frustration, lost opportunity and lost sales.

User Interface Engineering reported recently that half of all transactions on the web fail, because users fail to reach their goal (for ecommerce transactions, the figure is 65 percent). Meanwhile, only 30% of users find what they need on a site using search, compared to a 53% success rate when they use only links within the site to search for information.

Customers are finding little value in business website content. Forrester Research reported last year that Web users visit manufacturers' sites to research products – and 84% of these active prospects expect those sites to provide the best product information. But only 45% offer relevant and complete content.

According to the Forrester report, “Even though consumers, business customers and site executives underscore the need for a great user experience, most Web efforts don’t deliver it…. User experience matters, but most sites don’t deliver.”

The blunt usability expert Jakob Nielsen sums up the situation succinctly: “If people can’t figure (website usability) out, they deserve to go bankrupt.”