Built For Use

Teresa Esser writes "Karen Donoghue's new book, Built for Use: Driving Profitability Through the User Experience was clearly written for marketing professionals and upper level managers. Slashdot readers may find that some of the material in this book is intuitively obvious. But it's great to have a book like this on your shelf when you're trying to have a discussion with a co-worker who doesn't understand why corporate Web sites need to be user-friendly." Read on for the rest of her below. Built for Use: Driving Profitability Through the User Experience author Karen Donoghue pages 262 publisher McGraw Hill rating 9 -- great for its intended audience reviewer Teresa Esser ISBN 0071383042 summary Provides important information about how to make corporate Web sites user-friendly

Built for Use is the kind of book that can be slipped under a door or surreptitiously dropped into a mailbox to make a point without wasting time on yet another useless conversation.

The book is filled with tidbits like:

1. The best Web sites don't necessarily come from the best designers.

2. Frustrated artists with nose rings and black turtlenecks should not be allowed to turn a company's Web site into a piece of experimental non-performance art.

3. Flashing lights are great for Las Vegas, but who wants to work in Las Vegas?

Usability is not, and never has been, sexy. Grayscale sites like Yahoo! deliver value to their users because they load almost instantly and provide access to the things that people want.

This is basic, logical, intuitively obvious stuff. Yet it seems like a lot of this material is completely foreign to many of the people who make the final decisions about what corporate Web sites are going to look like.

As we move forward into a world where EZ-Passes will be used to finance fast-food purchases and where nanotechnologies will be woven into the threads of our jeans, it's important to learn -- and learn quickly -- that sexier is not always better.

Before companies sink millions of dollars into the development of yet another annoying and impossible-to-use Web site, they need to ask themselves:

1. Can the site be used by its intended audience?

2. Do the customers understand the language on the site?

3. Are the customers' computers fast enough to download all of the relevant material?

4. Are the customers savvy enough to find their way to the cash register?

5. Will the cash register accept the customers' money?

6. Is the system completely integrated with the company's back-end software?

7. If you call the company on the phone, will you get the same experience that you get when you visit the corporate Web site?

Companies need to make sure they are delivering the same messages through their Web sites that they are delivering through their phone banks, through their television ad campaigns, and through their product delivery channels.

If you say that you have sold me something, and you charge my credit card, then you had better deliver that thing to my door, and soon, or you will lose my trust.

Slapping a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval type "trust" sticker on some Web site does not build customer loyalty. Customer loyalty needs to be earned, one transaction at a time.

Could you imagine how annoying the world would be if retail clothing chains like The Gap put invisible trip-wires in front of their clothing racks, so that whenever you reached for a pair of khakis you crashed to the ground?

Could you imagine how annoying the world would be if retail stores covered all of their cash registers with a layer of Saran Wrap?

That's basically what some Web sites are doing now. If a retail site looks great but you can't use it to buy anything, or to access interesting content, then the site stinks.

If you work with marketers who desperately need to know a thing or two about user-experience strategy -- or maybe all nine -- hand them a copy of Built for Use. It will save time, and they'll praise you for allowing them to discover the truth on their own.

This book has a website, located at http://www.humanlogic.com/. You can purchase Built for Use from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.