We’ve all fallen in love with a business and enjoyed their products. Their designs seem perfect, but when we go to their websites, it’s a completely different story.
How could such a great brand go so horribly wrong? It happens far too often and sometimes their poor UX design online is enough to hurt the brand’s reputation.
It’s not hard to see everything that’s wrong, but the biggest question we ask ourselves is why? As any of us who have ever tried UX design in the real world versus online know, physical and digital are two completely different animals.
Who Gets UX Wrong Online Most Often
Before we dive into why industries get UX wrong online, let’s take a look at some of the worst culprits. Some industries just do it better (aka worse) than others. The top offenders include:
- Medical professionals and businesses
- Restaurants
- Salons and spas
- Theaters
In the real world, most of these business types are great at the user experience. Online, not so much. The websites are often boring, full of glitches or just plain hard to use. We might love going to the business (okay, so maybe not the doctor’s office), but we hate checking them out online.
Products Are Easier To Test
Products and services are physical things that are easy to test. Grab some eager test subjects and let them play with the product or test out the service. Suddenly, there’s so much feedback that it’s easy to see what’s working and what’s not.
A website seems like something that would be easy to test, but when compared to something physical, it’s much harder. Most industries throw up a website to increase product sales, but forget something incredibly important – user feedback.
It’s one of the top reasons businesses get UX wrong online. It’s also easy for businesses to get caught up in the fact that users love their products. How would any of us respond if we were told how perfect we were and then suddenly told how awful we were? It’s confusing right?
Websites Come Second
That leads us into what industries commonly do – put their websites second. The focus is on the product, which is a good thing. After all, why would a business need a website if their product was bad?
Tom Greever has his own list of sites that obviously put their websites second, even when the website was vital to the product, such as TurboTax. While some changes have been made, it’s still easy to see that UX design isn’t a top priority. Basically, industries want users talking about their great products and services. The website user experience is about as important as one of those fuzzy steering wheel covers is to a car’s overall design.
The Worst Mistakes They Make
Hubspot has gathered some eye opening statistics, such as how 38% of people stop interacting with a site if it’s unattractive and that 51% of people want better contact information. These statistics just prove that a website is important and when the user experience isn’t considered, it could cause visitors to leave for the competition.
Despite knowing how important UX design is, we still see websites making the same exact mistakes over and over again. It’s like Groundhog Day, except we can’t get out of the loop!
Some of the top mistakes industries make with their sites include:
- Ecommerce sites not including good product images and descriptions
- Cramming in too much stuff and ignoring white space
- Making content too small to see
- Making contact forms confusing
- Requiring too many steps to do things
- Confusing or limited navigation
- Turning the website into a bland version of the business’s product
- Not thinking about what the user wants
The last one is the worst crime. Industries think about what users want all the time when it comes to the real world, but seem to forget that the digital world works the same way. Websites should be easy to use and offer everything a user needs in a simple, yet attractive way.
UX Design Always Matters
The one thing we should all take away from the mistakes that some industries make is that UX design always matters. Whether it’s a child’s toy or a new ecommerce site, it needs to be designed with the user in mind. Anything less just makes it difficult for the user and leads to poor UX design.
Images: Yura Fresh, Henrique Felix, Joao Silas