Trains, Tickets, Toilets...Tell Your Customers Where To Go

When we travel to places where we don't speak the language, we tend to look for the basics. Typically, we focus on:
TRAINS --> TOILETS --> TICKETS
When customers visit your web site, it's like visiting a foreign land (for them).

Written Jul 18, 2008, read 148 times since then.

Your customers don't speak your language, they don't know what you do, they don't know if they should stay there – or if they want to come back.

Make your message/sign clear.

When you go to Google, do you read a sentence saying: "It's really easy and quick to search using Google." No you don't. And the reason is that it IS really easy to search using Google. It's so easy that you hardly have to think about it. There's a big search box in the center of the screen. That's easy. And if you have a good experience, you will come back again and again…and perhaps poke around and discover other things.

Links were invented so that we wouldn't have to say things like "on our website you will find ..." So don't tell people about what they'll find, link to it! Don't have your website become a bore on a bar stool, extolling to his half-empty whiskey glass about all the things he's going to do for you.

Nobody wants to read about your five year plan. Your website is a place for implementing that plan. Nobody wants to hear that you've just launched a new website, or that you've figured out how to do podcasting or videos.

I know how much effort goes into all these things. I know how excited the web team can get about all the shiny, new features (remember page counters?). I know how are it is to have a balanced message. I know how hard it is to resist boasting about all that investment. Nobody cares (except maybe your mother).

Strip it all away and let people do what they need to do.

When committing to customer-centric development (of a product, service, website, or whatever), it's important to stay strategic, always try to improve the business, and listen to customers (as human beings, not as users of a tool).

How to do this?

Ideal:

-Conducting real research is one of the surest paths to a successful web site

Practical:

1. Interview customers, stakeholders and advisors to share opinions Don’t fake your research by creating “fake personas” (like soccer mom, and The Teen)…do the hard work of talking to customers and understand their feelings around your offering as well as the pain you can help alleviate

2. Prioritize your findings against your business strategy the conclusion of usability reports or stakeholder reviews usually goes something like this: "We uncovered 52 opportunities for change on the site, and here's the list." Take these results and focus on the most important two or three strategic findings - the ones that will really move the needle on key business metrics.

3. Always revisit the bigger picture If you want to have an impact, then conduct the work in the light of business objectives: increasing revenue, or cutting costs, or improving usage or conversion rates or pageviews or something that helps pay the bills.

4. Make it easy for people Stated more precisely, the easier you make it for customers to achieve their goal, the more customers will try your services.

Learn more about the author, Christine Haskell.

Comment on this article

Posted by Richard Berman, Chappaqua, New York | Jul 18, 2008

Christine,

Quite a good article. A friend is planning a new website and I plan to forward it on to her.

Best, Rich Berman
Posted by Karen Hallis, Poulsbo, Washington | Jul 19, 2008

Hi Christine,

Great article! I am updating my website and your article will help tremendously. Thanks! Karen
Posted by Christine Haskell, Seattle, Washington | Jul 19, 2008

I'm so glad! Many companies don't have the money for usability studies, but forget to keep a close pulse on their customers' needs.
Posted by Dana Guyton, Woodinville, Washington | Jul 21, 2008

I just read 'Trains, Tickets, and Toilets and I loved it! -Your article read like my rant at every boardroom meeting and every 'optimization' report I've ever written. -Companies (even hugely successful ones that you'd think would know better) design procedures and services for themselves and not for the customer. What's worse is that each department within each company is totally self absorbed, so they aren't even optimizing procedures for the benefit of the whole; they're just doing whatever's easiest for their department at the moment without caring if it has a negative effect elsewhere in the organization.
Posted by Jen Vondenbrink, Foxboro, Massachusetts | Jul 21, 2008

Hi Christine. Great article. I think the biggest thing I took away besides the need to do research (which I am working on as we speak, thank you!) was the fact that when people visit our sites, they are coming to a different country.

The "ah-ha" I had was to ask myself if I didn't know anything about my business, would I want to click to the next page? Did the home page break it down simply enough so that I wanted to check out more? Did it give me the basics?

I am always looking at ways to work on my site. You've given me some great things to think about. Thanks!

Life's really simple. We overcomplicate it.
Posted by Maria Ross, Seattle, Washington | Jul 22, 2008

Loved this article - I think the key takeaway is to create all your communications (not just a website) with the customer in mind, from their POV. Companies suffer from that "Curse of Knowledge" and a) think everyone understands their technobabble or acronyms, or b) think they need to tell them EVERYTHING in the hopes that one or two things will stick.

if you are just starting out, definitely use real customers if you can to gauge this data (I am surprised by how many companies try to guess what their customers think rather than ask them) but I do recommend fleshing out your Ideal Customer if you are brand new (see my article on Know Thy Audience). And not just Teen or Soccer Mom, but what does person do, eat, breathe, enjoy, drive, live in, etc. It's a useful exercise that provides another data point to help you do exactly what you are proposing above: putting yourself in their shoes, and getting out of your own way.

Excellent article and love your writing style!
Posted by Joe Hage, Seattle, Washington | Jul 23, 2008

Your analogy resonated with me.

Traveling in Poland once, I remember how I struggled to understand or be understood.

But toilets? Toilets everyone "gets."

Thanks for the throwback.

........ 676 ........
Posted by Judy Dunn, Renton, Washington | Jul 24, 2008

It seems so simple, what you are describing. But why do we get so caught up in the bells and whistles?

I think in these time-challenged days, what you say is so important to remember. People are going on websites to get stuff. They don't want to be slowed down with messages like how quick and easy your site is to use.

This article was very helpful, Christine. Thanks.

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