Focus on the User: Task-Oriented Websites
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of websites: ones where
visitors come to be informed and entertained, and ones where
users come to get things done. The second kind of website
usually provides some kind of interactive service, which could
be anything from letting people upload pictures to giving them a
form to contact technical support representatives. Whatever your
site is there to do, though, you need to make sure that it
focuses on it. In other words, your website needs to be
task-oriented.
The Big Mistake
Let's say I was going to that picture upload site. What the site
lets me do is upload pictures to the web, and then send the link
to my friends so that they can see my pictures. Simple enough,
right? The site explains the concept simply enough, has an FAQ
on the kinds of pictures it can allow, a bit about the company
offering the service, an offer to subscribe to a premium version
of the service...
Well, that's great and all, but where do I upload my pictures?
Of course, it turns out that I just happened to miss the tiny
'Upload Now!' link at the bottom of the page. The chances are
I'm not the only one. I came to this website to perform a task,
and the website didn't make it easy for me - because it wasn't
at all task-oriented.
So how should things have worked? Well, really, the very first
thing on the site should have been a very short blurb about what
it did - two sentences maximum - followed by a box that allows
me to find my picture and a button marked 'upload'. Why make me
go through to a new page when I could do it right here? Why tell
me a load of things I don't need to know before letting me
upload a picture? Everything else can still be there, but it's
not the focus: the focus is on getting the task done.
Taking it Further
Of course, that was a relatively simple example, but you get the
point. Let's say I'm going to the technical support website now.
Let's think about this logically: why would I be doing that? The
chances are it's because I have a problem that I want technical
support to help me with! In this situation, I don't want to read
a page about your technical support being industry-leading and
great value - I just want to get my problem across. Pictures of
smiling models pretending they work in technical support are
particularly likely to annoy me.
How should this website work? Ideally, it should first of all
offer the phone number, in large text. Many people will prefer
to phone, especially the elderly, and just came to the site to
find the number. Next, there should be a set of options like
this:
Welcome to technical support. What are you having a problem with?
Mouse Keyboard Hard disk CD drive Something else
Each option links through to another page, asking the next
question you would ask. This immediately lets you narrow down
the possible problems - it's a far better solution than sticking
up a big 'knowledge base' and letting people search through it
to solve their own problem. These 'expert systems' will save you
a lot of time when it comes to supporting anything, if you
deploy them correctly.
A Question of Language
In many cases, changing your site to be more task-oriented isn't
really a question of redesigning - it's all in the language. For
example, I recently saw an email website go from this navigation:
Log in Register FAQ
to this:
Check my email Get an email account About us
Writing 'check my email' is a hundred times better than writing
'log in', because it matches up with what the user is actually
there to do. Especially for complicated company website, it's
great to have a quick 'task list' stuck up there in a corner.
People may just want to sign up for whatever you offer without
reading the site, or contact you, or maybe just let you know
that their details have changed in some way. Whatever, it's a
great courtesy to make all the interactive elements of your site
easily accessible, as well as mixing them in with the
information.