The Catalog of Unfindable Web Widgets
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Form Widget Unfindability
When have you seen a feedback form constructed to pull out any interesting responses? Listing three or five or more suggestions actually used would give the impression of a dialog between customers and company. (and prove the company wants suggestions). Forms can prequalify clients, guide decisionmaking (as in registrations) and serve as a value added tool. Just try to find a tutorial on form design (not constructing forms — designing forms for use).
Site Counters You Never Find:
“Average orders take 2 minutes 37 seconds” or “57 visitors became first–time buyers today, and saved $47.37 dollars on average.” If your visitor is the hesitant procurement person, more concerned with reliable delivery, have your web widget display the percentage of deliveries which arrive on time. Or about one hundred other alternatives, any of which would be more user focused than the infamous You Are Visitor 12834979. Counters being bad design is not the crux of the problem, rather it’s what web designers choose to count.
PHPCounter is an easy to install free hit counter. It keeps track of large set of traffic statistics for each web page, including hit time, referring link and referring domain, user agent and browser, remote host or remote IP, language. Includes analysis for search engine referrals, including search keywords and terms.
Amazon counts what customers care about
Update: Amazon has a visual search for loose diamonds using slider widgets. Noteworthy for setting ranges and guiding users through the buying process using the interface. New tools like Ajax and PHP await visual designers who realize humans don’t just parse price data when shopping.
Bargain Unfindable
You can buy a cheap airline ticket on a famous travel site but can’t make an informed decision since flight reliability, maintenance, overall customer service, overbooking, financial condition and even luggage delivery statistics rating widgets are missing. Information is about whether the low price includes arriving at your destination on time and satisfied, the criterion for judging if a low price represents a bargain.
Update: AirTroductions allows you to select seating next to people who share your interests. Travelocity protects your travel experience with a guarantee. Offering airfare context based on historic data not unlike stock prices is Farecast.
News.com heat map
You Can Get There From Here
Web widgets could introduce the idea of preemptive hinting. The most POPular links of the Day, week, month. Some sites construct entire paragraphs made of densely packed but separate links, and there are directories and whatnot. Perhaps there is some need to integrate Web statistics into user navigation widgets so, before they click, visitors can tell the really hot links from those less traveled.
Update: Why click through every day on one of those blog calendar widgets when Thermal Mapping of Weblogs shows the hot days.
Giving Widgets A Personality
The Commuter, Fitness Freak, Traveler, Audiophile, File Hoarder, and Audio Recorder. ZDNet: MP3 Player Personality Test lists the users by use profile, not experience level. A more informative way to classify shoppers than “High bandwidth” and “Low Bandwidth” (or even more technology centric choices) many sites use. Even better, they use qualifying questions and web icons so users can confirm they are in the right section. You could use something like this to determine which model or style would be right as a gift.
Unmentionable Web Widgets
One jewelry store revealed most of their non–occasional purchases (not for weddings, engagement, or other occasions) are bought by men smoothing over a relationship blow-up. Where then is the jewelry site with a product selection widget based around the strategic question: “How mad is she?” A typical task analysis will turn up lowest common denominator tasks, rarely the more important objective users can’t or refuse to articulate. Acknowledgment of that objective — in a small or even humorous way — would be the information missing from Web sites which only sell solutions in theory.
How Are You Doing
Trixie Telemetry is a little tongue–in–cheek. Not so when you need a basic template for key performance indicators available at a glance. For a web hosting provider, what key performance indicators will get a potential client to switch to you? What about group performance on the company intranet?
Survey Web Widgets
People lie on surveys and focus groups, often unwittingly explains the first rule of information based web widgets. The consequence is survey widgets which actually survey anything you can act on are unfindable. Fund a feature web widgets add the missing desirability dimension to information by putting the customer’s money where their mouth is.
Unfindable Value Chain Widgets
Value chains, a simple diagram indicating how the company creates unique value on the way to deliverables, are unfindable web widgets. Value chains are not the generic charts common to every business, nor are they a series of process steps. Showing the ecosystem of value creation both outside and inside company walls is more desirable.
Web Traffic As Web Widget
When you are the 50th, 500th, or 5000th “me too” company in a category what do you do? Ask the usability camp or the creatives and the answer is unfindable. Visitorville turns web visitors into web widgets; using a SimCity graphical front end for user friendly web site traffic analysis down to individual user segments.
Error 411: Information Not Found
Does the term Web Content strike you as odd, when information is what everyone is supposed to be after? Tired of content as bland undifferentiated filler keeping the keywords from running together? If so congratulations, you have just discovered a design crux.
If you get frustrated by sites that try to “me too” their way to desirability, then you are not alone. But the content mind set seeks only to fill a content hole in a layout. Often content is mocked–up in Latin, to prevent distraction from what technologists see as the real job. No wonder web widgets aren’t driven by the user desire for informative content. If you want to show visitors to your site how desirable information and technology can be — contact Design Crux.