The BBC often report some good stuff on technology and web sites. As web design is my line of ‘work’, what follows is some comment on a bunch of reports I’ve been meaning to post for a while now.
“According to research from Nielsen/NetRatings, people are buying cutting-edge technology but often don’t understand the terms that describe what their device actually does.”
“Some of the figures surprised us,” said Alex Burmaster, internet analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings.
Okay, I’ve taken the quote out of context but it still holds up – how can anyone be surprised. In my experience most people are at best clinging onto the internet/techy gadget terms and acronyms by their fingernails. I must say that I’m pretty bored by it all – it just seems that each time something new is brought out there are a bunch more techy acronyms to learn (often corporate bullshit speak) and many are uneccessarily bandied around by sales reps, adverts, magazines etc by people who don’t really know what they mean or the implications – take the whole crappy HDTV/HDMI thing – the joke being that unless you have a super high quality source the picture is likely going to be inferior to your old tube television.
Read more on the BBC ‘Geekspeak still baffles web users’.
Another good article is ‘Designing a more accessible web’ from the ‘Click Online’ section of the BBC site.
Web accessibility is another facet of web design that people talk about a lot but seem to roundly ignore in the real world when it comes to designing (or commissioning a design) their own web sites. When accessibilty agency Nomensa concluded their report of leading websites from five sectors across 20 countries with ‘most websites’ failing disabled , it’s hard to be surprised.
I can’t help but feel that it goes hand in hand with websites which must surley only have been previewed by the designers to top management and never actually tested in the real world by real people. Habitat (go on, bookmark that product you are interested in!) and Muji (I know there’s an online shop in there somewhere) are just two examples. I like the fact thet the habitat site has a ‘site credits’ link – there is no credit due to anyone for that mess, and if I’d been involved in any way I’d keep my name off the list.
If nothing else, I am always amazed that online stores simply ignore the x% of potential visually impaired punters – it’s so easy to make webs site work well it seems like a no brainer, not to say a courtesy to customers who are, after all, paying the wages.
To this end the BBC reports the M&S website came top of the 20 most popular High Street retailers according to Webcredible.
“Kim Gilmour from Which Computing magazine said that shoppers are looking for online stores that are uncluttered, well-signposted and quick to load.” – are there really web design companies out there who don’t know, or overlook, this stuff. The answer sadly is yes, and the more corporate the client, the worse the whole mess gets very often.
A report by Consultants Jupiter Research for web devs Akamai:http://www.akamai.com/ reiterated this again in a report suggesting websites face four-second cut-off.
Not entirely surprising that it also concluded ’ the experience shoppers have on a retail site colours their entire view of the company behind it’ – that’ll be the same as getting crap service in a high street store then!
Disappointing stuff. Really, this is not rocket surgery!
