The other day I did a blog security upgrade for a WordPress blogger. In order to do some of the upgrades, I need access to your web hosting account, in this case, his.
He sent me his username and password and noted that he was hosted with Host Gator.
Ok, no problem.
So I headed over to Host Gator’s site only to get frustrated as hell. They are suppose to be a web hosting company. I assume that means people will be logging in and out of their accounts often, not to mention needing access to their webmail accounts whenever they’re away from home and don’t have access to their normal email program.
But I couldn’t find a login / out link anywhere. Now when the person signs up for web hosting they will be sent a link to the login page in an email, but what if you want to login from your parent’s house? Or an Internet cafe? How are you suppose to get into your webmail? Do they have webmail?
Confused, I clicked on their Support link and typed in my question. The returned response made it sound like logging is was such a hassle I had to watch a movie on how to do it.
Ok, I’m not meaning to bash on a competitor’s website. Sorry Host Gator, I don’t have anything against you, I swear.
The point here I’m trying to make is this.
You need to make things easy for people online. If you own a membership based website, make it easy for them to get into their account. If you sell a product, make sure navigation to that product is laid out easily.
The worst thing you can do is create confusion on your blog, because I have a saying I’ve always stuck with and has served me well.
“A confused mind always says, no“.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:15 am
That is sticky … “a confused mind always says no” … I like that.
I’m a fan of making things easy to find. It’s a tough balancing act of exposing more than just the tip of the iceberg, while keeping things simple. Less is sometimes more, but then again, sometimes less is … well, just less
I do need to invest more in user experience patterns and I will at some point, but for now I tune and prune based on feedback and testing.
J.D. Meier´s last blog ..Finding a Way to Do the Things You Hate
July 8th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Less is sometimes . . . less, I like that.
I’m currently working to make our site much more user friendly and simple due to user feedback and testing. That’s definitely the way to go.