Profit Loss - Your Money Is Not Good Enough - ΩJr. Failure Notes

Yet something similar to that is exactly what a lot of companies do with their web sites. (We aren’t kidding when we say “a lot”.) They present hurdle after hurdle, before their potential customers are allowed to spend their money.

Hurdles

• Some web stores close their web site on a Sunday.
  
• Lots of web applications require javascript. In itself that isn’t bad, if it were clearly noted, helping us recognise we need to turn on javascript.
  
• Some web sites fail to provide contact information. Some web sites use a contact form… but then make it impossible to use that form, and fail to provide any other way for the customer to reach them.
  
• Some web applications require plug-ins, like Sun Java, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Apple Quicktime, or Microsoft Windows Media Player (to name a few). Again, in itself that isn’t bad, if it were clearly noted, helping us recognise we need to activate plug-in support, and if some fall-back content is provided for the plug-in-free visitors.
  
• Lots of web sites force us to read a language we don’t understand, based on assumptions about our geographical location rather than our language preferences we set in our browser.
  
• Some web sites go through the trouble of translating their material into several languages, but fail to offer the same content or services, like somehow speaking a different language makes it so we don’t want to buy what they sell.
  
• Lots of web sites require the ability to save some information on your computer, at this point mostly using cookies. That isn’t bad… but some web sites require unsafe, un-private methods, and sometimes cross-domain cookie access… without informing us.
  
• Some web sites present a navigation system to their customers that is so hard to understand, or so different from what customers have learnt to expect, that they can’t find anything.
  
• Lots of web sites use a colour scheme that assumes everyone uses black text on a white background, failing to supply a colour for the background colour.
  

Bye bye, profit!

Why these are hurdles

• Yes, we understand that you want to rest on Sundays, especially if your culture tells you. Why you force us to spend our money at your competitor, goes beyond our comprehension.
  
• Plenty of web sites fail to indicate anything extra is needed, expecting us to read the minds of the developers, presenting a puzzle to potential customers. Who has the tenacity to fiddle through the web site’s source code, hoping to find why it doesn’t work, when it’s easier just to leave and spend their time and money at the competitor?
  
• Plenty of people either don’t know how, or aren’t allowed to turn on javascript, or plug-ins, or add web sites to other Internet Security Zones, because their IT department doesn’t want to deal with internet dangers (and who can blame them for trying to keep their network safe?).
  
• Even very smart people won’t be able to buy anything if they can’t find it. Your site might have it available… but if your customer can’t find it, it simply isn’t there.
  
• It might be true that we don’t want to buy something in a language we don’t understand… but please let us be the judge of that. If you take that away from us, we have to assume you don’t care.
  
• The default Microsoft Windows High Contrast colour schemes include ones that have a black background with white text. Not supplying a colour for the background, usually means the system’s background colour is substituted, resulting in black text on a black background, rendering it unusable, if not invisible.

Why this makes you lose profit

If your web site fails to offer an alternative your customers can use to spend their money, if your web site fails to tell your customers what they need to use it, or if it looks like you simply don’t care about them, why should they care about you? They won’t be spending their money at your site; they’ll spend it at the competitor.

Who is to blame?

You are. It’s your site. Don’t let the developer tell you technology forces them to block potential customers from giving you their money: they’re lying. Most of the hurdles mentioned are easy to fix.