Call me naive, but I truly believe that no one goes out to build a website that is confusing to navigate, illogical, impossible to find or design-challenged. I think that the biggest reason why websites like these are built is because designers, developers, marketers and managers all make assumptions that negatively affect a website. It is not necessarily lack of talent, but it is a lack of awareness. When working with new clients, I often have to overcome these assumptions:
1. Users Think the Same Way I Do.
Unfortunately, I often see websites that reflect the values of the demographic that are building them, instead of reflecting that of the viewers. The classic example was when I worked with a major healthcare software firm. The (mostly male) management insisted on having beautiful perfect women representing the site since that was attractive to them, the decision makers. But, the user-base was mainly middle-aged-to-nearly-retired women – a demographic that does not necessarily want to be reminded about how beautiful a 20-something is.
After a quick discussion with some of the users, I realized they wanted to have a picture of a woman who they related to, not the dream-woman chosen by the management. In changing the image – still using a woman, but one who was in the healthcare environment and who looked more senior and in-charge. This image related more to what the user-base wanted to be. Now, this change may seem obvious to you – but think about the images on your site – do they appeal to you or your user-base? Do they reflect your values or theirs? In all decisions, the user-bases values should win.
2. I Can Be Creative with Navigation.
Another dangerous assumption is that people building a site can be creative with navigation. “About Us” and “Contact” for example, are navigational elements that you see on almost all sites, so why make a change? I was working on a technology site that wanted to call their online tour “snapshots”. Although this was a clever name for the tour, during usability testing all users had no idea what the button meant and therefore did not click on it while going through their tasks.
Now – building navigation is a huge topic, that I will get into more deeply in a later post. In general, the whole focus should be on figuring out how the user thinks, instead of creating something new. The whole goal of navigation is to allow users to move through the site effortlessly. If they have to think for a few seconds about navigation, you have failed. Is the navigation on your site standard, or creative? Is there anything you can do to make it more clear? I am certainly not down on being creative – I am just saying that creativity should be used in other places on the project – not on the nav.
3. If I Build it They Will Come.
I find that a lot of site managers can be convinced that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a priority for their site. The people who convince them are usually web designers who are afraid that using SEO best practices will ruin their designs. First of all, I think this is completely untrue and I see examples all of the time of well optimized sites that are also beautiful. Second of all, every site should take SEO best practices because search is such an important traffic generator – for both consumer and B2B, reardless of your brand and audience.
Traffic is central to any marketing campaign and search is almost always a huge part of that. So selecting keywords that users actually employ, adding those keywords to the text and a limiting the use of Flash (Search Engine Land has an excellent article about this) are just the beginning of a successfully SEOd site. The decision should not be whether or not a site should be optimized. The decision should be: how should we go about it?
4. The Site Development Will Finish at the Go Live Date.
To me, a site is never really finished. When a site goes live, and campaigns start running, new learnings always take place. For example, when looking at analytic reports, you may learn that some products on your product page are simply not being viewed, so you want to take another run at it. Or, you may see in your site search reports that a lot of users are looking for something that you do not yet provide, so you could add a section on it. Or on your Google AdWords campaign you could find that the most popular search/conversion terms on your site are not what you thought they would be, so you can change the site focus.
I am not saying to scrap a site right after it has been released, but there are always tweaks and changes that can happen. Even small changes in navigational labels or changing the location of buttons have in my experience brought on big changes in conversions/navigation patterns. Also – sites that have a fresh look for different seasons (even if that includes tax season or trade show season) can make a big difference.
Conclusion
Moving away from these assumptions is not expensive in terms of site development cost. But ignoring them is expensive in terms of the cost of confounding or missing out on users. Being conscious about these decisions can go a long way to improving the user experience — and the bottom line. So to quote my old art teacher, to assume makes an ass of us 
!
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2 Responses to “4 Assumptions to Avoid When Building a Website”
Oh, to have that first element emblazoned on certain foreheads! The “we like it, so they will” mentality is so prevalent throughout the web, but especially in the B2B world where target market research on a website is so often absent.
SEO is essential — heck, it’s my field! — but the rest of good marketing…knowing your demographic and THEIR preferences is just as important to web site success. Passing this post on to some who need to know that! LOL!
Yes – it is a shame that so little demographic research is absent in the B2B world when it is now so easy and cheap to do. I think a lot of businesses still put the bare minimum into their websites, and that is why they get the bare minimum out of it. Then they think that the web is not a good medium for them – but it is really because they didn’t get the full potential out of it in the first place!