Hello, you made it then?

I’d had a sneaking suspicion too, that by and large, web users could actually find they’re way around a website most of the time. So why do the consumers of our content get such a bad wrap? Here’s a few suggestions:

New technology, new problems

Eye-tracking software, UX testing and A/B splits all have their merits, but paradoxically, they all have their problems too. Sometimes having too much information can be counter productive if used in the wrong way.

Just because it hasn’t been seen doesn’t mean it hasn’t been noticed… The work I’ve been doing with eye-tracking has shown that the users may look at something but they don’t focus on it or indeed talk about it but they keep it in their head until they do need it – Joe Leech

We as designers, businesses and high-end users can get so obsessed with making everything stand-out and glimmer that we forget that the whisper is often louder than the shout. Ask yourself, is a bigger search bar better than a well designed one & do we need that many ajax effects?

As the baddy in the Incredibles said ‘When eveyone’s super, no-one will be’, and that seems a very apt quote when applied to noisy web elements. In short then, decide what is important on a sliding scale. If your site is search driven then provide the emphasis on search, if it’s RSS Subscribers, then make dam sure they can find how to subscribe. Targeting the core action rather than every possible action will result in a better experience all round.

Put down the mouse

There are some users who will keyboard navigate your site; some partially & some fully. It’s easy to write off these users in a sweeping statement such as ‘They only make up 3% of my user base’ etc… but in essence, these users get a bad wrap for not having a mouse, how’s that fair?

It’s fairy easy to rectify too. Basic Tab-Key navigation uses :focus, or in IE’s case :active to display a changed state of an object. As we usually give links a :hover state, lets also apply a :focus and an :active state. That way users can see where they are by tabbing through the site too if the wish.

a:hover, a:focus, a:active { your styles;}

Just for good measure, apply that to form fields too:

input:focus, input:active { your styles; }

Suddenly your site is on it’s way to being much more accessible with just a few extra bits of code.

Hey where’d ya go?

When it comes to our users the goal seems clear, we must keep them on our website at all costs. There is a belief that opening an external link in a new window will keep a user on your site and if that means altering that user’s expectation of their web experience, then so be it.

… the links open in a new window. I’m not okay with that. I trust my readers to come back to my website, and I strongly believe I shouldn’t hinder their ability to navigate away from my website, and I see it as an insult to their intelligence, and breaks a bond of trust to modify their browser’s behaviour – Cameron Hunt (via Sam Brown)

It seems to me it comes down to trust & transparency. By trusting your users to return to your site by themselves you’re telling them that you believe your content is strong enough in itself for them to warrant a return visit without being reminded of where they were. If they don’t return (and some won’t) then maybe it’s down to the ’stickyness-less’ of your content and not dependent of which window the site opened in.

At the end of the day (sorry for the footballers analogy) it’s about control, and ultimately the user has it.

On a personal note, I’ll often skim read the first few paragraphs of an article such as this lengthy beauty early in the day, follow a few referenced links and come back to read the rest in full detail some hours later; or at several points during the day. Just because I followed a link out and didn’t immediatly return doesn’t mean I won’t, because I will, if the contents good.

*article image credit icanhascheezburger