The nonsense usability dilemma

Over my years of working as a user experience consultant, I’ve come across numerous examples of what I call the “nonsense usability dilemma”. It happens when the needs of the customer diverge from the perceived requirements of parts of the business. It goes something like this: “If a site is easy to use, visitors will not stay for long and that’s no good”.

One of the biggest causes of this is the belief that it’s vital that visitors to the site are exposed to all the content. This argument is used to defend convoluted user journeys, where site visitors end up disorientated and frustrated. It’s the online equivalent of changes in supermarket design, implemented under the impression that confused and lost customers buy more products.

In a previous engagement, a business division within a major client had mis-interpreted the objective that ‘the interface should provide the best experience possible but also ensure users are not pushed to leave too early’. They had taken this to mean that the user should be delayed from achieving their final objective by being exposed to as much ‘interesting’ content as possible along the way.

On another occasion, I can remember sensing disappointment after a few minor changes on a website (suggested by us) significantly improved conversion rates but reduced the number of products explored on the average visit.

The truth is that users want to find things quickly. The number of page impressions per visitor is not, by any means, a direct measure of a good user experience. If an average user stays in a site for 10 minutes and visits 30 pages but doesn’t buy anything and never comes back, how does this help the business achieve its objectives? Furthermore, in these days of Web2.0, they may also post negative comments about the site, which is likely to cause some damage to the brand.