Don’t get me wrong.  I love my church, which has been recently renamed Austin Ridge Bible Church from Westlake Bible Church.  Check out the sermon if you are curious to learn about the name change (forward to 10:39 in the 38 minute video).  Seeing Brad Thomas speak has been the most spiritually challenging and rewarding experience of my life.  Now, along with the name change came a brand new web site for Austin Ridge.  I think the look and feel of the new site looks GREAT:

So the site looks really smooth - however, from a task-driven usability perspective, I have quickly found issues with the site’s information architecture.

For example, TASK ONE:  I had a recent need to send a friend a video of a recent sermon.  The old site had a “sermons” routing component on the home page making it very intuitive and easy to locate.  Excited to use the new site, I went hunting for “sermons.”  I didn’t find sermons in the primary navigation across the top and looked within the main body of the site with no luck.  After experimenting with some of the links, I noticed the new site has the sermons listed under “Video & Audio” at the bottom of the home page, hidden below the fold.  I feel confident others looking for previous sermons are thinking of a trigger word like “sermon” not “Video & Audio.”  I also found when you get into the “Video & Audio” section, the Video Gallery section’s secondary navigation changes as you drill down creating a little disorientation, making it more challenging to find the right content.

TASK TWO:  I wanted to send a friend the contact information of one of the staff members.  Following the defacto standard on most sites, I clicked on “About - Who We are” thinking I would find a listing of staff members.  Nope.  I realized after hunting around I needed to use the links at the bottom of the home page under the fold.  I noticed “Our Staff and Elders” and found the staff person I was looking for.  I also realized the old site gave detail pages for each staff member so you could easily forward the address for the staff member.  The staff are all one scrolling page with the new site.  I then had to work a little harder and comment saying scroll down to the middle of the page to find the person I recommended - a slight downgrade from each having their own detail page.

So what is the big deal if a visitor can’t immediately find the exact content they are looking for?  It is a HUGE deal.  The web is like a TV with a trillion channels.  Any distraction, “noise” or frustration can turn the level of interest a visitor has to zero in nanoseconds causing a portion of visitors to leave and with some to never return.

Being the Managing Principal of White Lion, I felt compelled to find out who designed the site.  I noticed the web firm specializing in affordable web site templates at a low upfront and monthly cost. The whole experience made me think about how my sales team has seen lower priced template-type competitors in the marketplace as of late.  As contrasted with a template or off-the-shelf system, White Lion uses powerful, open-source software with a highly custom approach producing a clean, professional and memorable look and feel matched with easy to administer content management systems.  Think of a custom tailored suit designed to fit perfect and last.

Taking a step back I was listening to Business Week’s “Innovation of the Week” podcast.

A person being interviewed talked about the cost to integrate SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for larger companies.  He explained the high costs (in the millions) to license SAP and then the millions to get a third party to implement the software.  Then the most expensive part is having to change existing business process to fit the rigidity of SAP (more millions in hard and soft costs).  I am writing all of this not to slam Austin Ridge’s site.  Like the SAP example, I am pointing out how many off-the-shelf or templated sites force content to be organized and displayed in a certain way which may not be intuitive to the audience.  I feel the Austin Ride content was forced into content buckets as compared to the content driving the naming and placement within the site.

Now I will be taking action and offering White Lion’s services if Austin Ridge ever considers changing the current web site.  I also hope if you are in the market for a custom web site or web application project you give some serious consideration to the freedom my team has with taking a custom approach.  The custom approach does cost more.  At the same time, you are given nanoseconds to make a great first impression.  Since content is what drives visitors to your site, we recommend you are hyper-sensitive in making the experience as fluid and as intuitive as possible.  So contact our friendly and highly experienced sales team to help optimize your next web design project.

Steve C. Kahle
Managing Principal
White Lion Internet Agency

I recently had a problem with my Quicken personal software. Knowing I would probably be routed to an offshore call center, instead of calling I decided to go the route of online chat for help. Even though I ended up chatting with a support rep in India, I must say the experience was efficient and solved my problem quickly. The typing I bet must of helped with overall comprehension in both directions.

The next day I received the following:

Still reflecting on the positive customer experience, I was prepared to take a few moments so I clicked the link to find:

Do you know what happened? What would you have done? I was faced with 6 required field and one optional field. I bailed and didn’t complete the online form. We think Quicken is missing the boat by asking for too much information. Quicken should take a “gradual engagement” approach where they ask one, maybe two questions initially. The following screen could ask a few more so if the customer bails out, at least Quicken benefits from the first set of questions being answered. The other approach is to have perhaps one rating component on the page (perhaps five stars) and a comment box.

Compare with:

Our team loves complex web site development. We understand the importance of keeping a very macro perspective working hard to listen and understand our client’s business landscape and objectives. Like engineering and designing a simple customer feedback form, we also get a thrill out of executing the small details paramount in creating a memorable online experience. So give us some feedback and tell us about your new web development project and experience our way of thinking.

Steve C. Kahle - Managing Principal - White Lion Internet Agency

Our team recently launched www.wholeplanetfoundation.org. The mission alone really created an extra sense of project ownership for our team.

The lead programmer who also happens to take ping pong way too seriously incorporated an element of “persistent navigation.” So what is persistent navigation?

Example: Let’s say your task is to check out Whole Food’s CEO John Mackey’s involvement with the Whole Planet Foundation. You visit http://www.wholeplanetfoundation.org/about/directors/ and click on “John Mackey.” You first notice how smoothly the page glides down to Mackey’s content. After reading up on how Whole Foods was created you are ready to get involved with the cause. Rather than having to manually scroll up or find a “back to top” link you notice the navigation has traveled with you down the page. The “Get Involved” button is just pixels away making Mr Fitts of Fitts law happy based on how close the target (in this case the “Get Involved” button) is from your mouse. As my five year old son says, “How cool is that!”

Being in business since 1995 we have seen many early examples of what we are now calling persistent navigation with the use of frames for example. Framed pages are carved up into one or many scrolling boxes often creating an unwieldy experience. The framed site approach was usually jumpy and not very smooth. Based on user task feedback, we feel 12 years later persistent navigation may indeed have its place on the web as shaving a few seconds off of a visitor’s experience. Any time savings in our world is big reason to celebrate!

So what do you think about the persistent navigation approach?

Steve C. Kahle - Managing Principal - White Lion Internet Agency

Let’s start with defining:

Validation Drag: The concept of form validation, although needed, will cause some visitors to abandon completing online forms. With practically unlimited web site choices some time-starved Type-A visitors may leave to never return if faced with having to correct their input on a form due to form validation.

To avoid validation drag, we need to improve the engineering, designing, and programming of forms to minimize the need to invoke validation thereby increasing posts (e.g. customer sign-ups, ecommerce orders, etc.). The form’s UI (user interface) should be designed to minimize the chance a visitor will input incomplete or incorrect data without increasing brainload time. For example, a form could give visitors feedback about inputting the correct length of a password while the visitor types.

In White Lion’s last “Programming Sync” meeting, our team of 7 programmers and I vigorously debated what we now define as validation drag. In the usability corner we want to decrease and ultimately eliminate the chance a visitor becomes frustrated while completing online tasks. In the design corner (our programmers have awesome design awareness and many with design experience) is the need to decrease “stuff” on the page.

The team had already agreed that giving feedback to password input on a form made sense. A while back a team member posted a “Web Sighting” to our Intranet noticing how Skype showed a count down mechanism to the right of the password input field.

Our debate expanded and questioned giving visitors feedback on other fields like username and email address using AJAX. At the end of the day, the debate was a great exercise in the reduction of validation drag and brainload time creating better user interfaces.

It’s really all about protecting the user, their time and their success accomplishing tasks on the site. Our Internet Agency’s approach is to collaborate and remove any potential for Validation Drag with form feedback components (e.g. password length feedback as the user types). Our team must balance the added feedback components with keeping the user interface clean and intuitive. Being a culture of data, we will continue to measure, adjust and learn from the feedback components we implement.

Best of luck with the online forms you encounter,

Steve C. Kahle - Managing Principal - White Lion Internet Agency

We do. Let’s first define pogo-sticking as it relates to web development:

“Pogo sticking is the act of jumping up and down through the hierarchy of a web site, repeatedly hitting the back button to move to the next item in a list.”

Let’s review two examples.

Example 1: You are researching a company online and want to peruse the company’s press release section. You start with the first press release and need to go back to the main listing page to access the next press release. Wouldn’t it be easier to be able to access the next press release from the press release detail page you were on originally?

Example 2: You are looking online for a flat panel TV. You visit a leading ecommerce site and see a great listing of flat panel TVs and drill down to one that fits your budget. You want to see the next TV the site offers and have to go back to the listing page. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could travel in a linear path to the next TV from the page you are currently on?

At White Lion we see the need for a visitor to pogo-stick as a barrier. The accumulation of barriers, both small and large, quickly add up to lost opportunities. As we all know, lost opportunities can be costly whether it’s a sophisticated ecommerce site or an interactive informational corporate site where first impressions are often made.

How do we fix the unnecessary clicks or the need to pogo-stick? It’s certainly not rocket science. The answer has been used in online photo galleries practically since the Internet went mainstream. The solution lies in a simple “Next/Previous Mechanism.” The mechanism is also armed with title tags allowing a visitor to hover their mouse over the “next” or “previous” links. The mouse hover reveals a description of what the visitor can expect. The Next/Previous Mechanism helps dramatically reduce pogo-sticking by allowing an intuitive linear path of exploration compared to having to jump back and forth from listing pages back to detail pages.

For an example of a White Lion-designed site with the Next/Previous Mechanism in action, visit the T.Stacy site. T.Stacy has been in the forefront of purchasing, managing and selling downtown properties in Austin and other cities across Texas.

Pogo sticking eliminated when viewing by city: http://www.tstacy.com/portfolio_list.php?location_id=1

Pogo sticking eliminated when viewing by project: http://www.tstacy.com/portfolio_detail.php?building_id=56

Pogosticks can be fun, but when it comes to finding information, no one likes to be bounced around.

Best regards,

Steve C. Kahle - Managing Principal - White Lion Internet Agency

At White Lion we have had many contentious debates over opening content in a new window versus the same window. I have noticed over the decade plus of being in the business, many web developers do not have a unified strategy for when to open content in the same window versus opening in a new window. We do.

We feel you need a very compelling reason to open content in a new window since the visitor will be without an easy way to go back. In other words, when you open content in a new window, the visito’s back button breaks. When you open content in a new window your browser thinks you are on the page numero uno so the back button is grayed out.

So who cares? Visitors do. I remember when I was in a meeting with one of our law firm clients several years ago. The managing partner was a very experienced web user. He commented how he hated (a few expressive expletives were used) when he couldn’t use his back button. The meeting triggered memory of many case studies I have read where newbie users were extremely confused when their back button failed to work. I thought here is a man who is seeing triple digit growth because of his web site and Internet technology. The managing partner was practically an expert Internet user but still didn’t really understand the “new window versus the same window” concept - he just knew he hated when a web site broke his back button.

So what is an example of an exception to the rule? As a quick aside, my wife was sucked into White Lion vortex starting out doing temporary work 9 years ago. My wife turned into the best project manager our agency has seen (if I could only get her to come out of her semi-retirement). She noticed when she would open PDF files, she would often times accidentally close out of her entire browser due to how most browsers present PDF files embedded in the browser page. My wife felt we should make PDF files open in a new window to make life easier on visitors to our sites. Our team debated and we agreed creating another White Lion standard (we have over 200). Several years later I noticed Jakob Nielsen who is a known Internet usability expert post an article and agree with my wife and our standard (see bullet point number 1).

Sincerely,

Steve C. Kahle - Managing Principal - White Lion Internet Agency