Usability and Trust: Do You Feel Safe and Comfy Entering Personal Information?

Posted on May 2, 2006 by cre8pc

I was at THE MALL, (Definition: Where teenagers are most willing to exercise, pretend to be shopping and hang at Starbucks), the other day. Calmly and acting really cool so as not to be uncool with my even cooler daughter, Arielle, I handed over my credit card to the funky cool bracelets-jingling girl behind the counter.

Awaiting the transaction to finish, Arielle saw a form where she could fill out her information and the store would send her discounts, cool stickers and other stuff to impress a teenager. I didn’t want her filling it out and handing over all her private information so quickly without thinking about it first. As I was giving the mini-mom lecture, (In a cool way, of course. We were in THE MALL.), the girl behind the counter said,“Oh, this form is much safer than using the Internet. I won’t buy online because I hate entering my credit card and personal information.”

I refrained from saying anything to the store clerk, but I think I looked surprised. She was young and from the “Raised on the Internet” age group. And yet, she was afraid of it?

The Big Bad Wolf

In online privacy conversations with developers and from usability studies, I see and hear more conclusions that older persons, and those new to the Internet, are the ones who don’t trust the ‘Net. I wonder if the demographics are bigger than we thought?

One standard practice websites are getting away from is the one where you had to register first before being able to add to the cart. Nowadays, you can shop-till-you-drop on an ecommerce site and when you go to complete the shopping cart process, this is when you are asked for your personal information and often a login and password. It’s thought that at this point the visitor is ready to make a committment and complete the sale.

But, you would be wrong.

Shopping cart abandonment still occurs after registration in cases where shipping costs are now displayed for the first time, taxes are added, and any hidden costs like rental or shipping insurance are finally mentioned. These “surprise costs” were unknown and not shared with the site visitor until AFTER they entered their private information. Many are angered by this and abandon the sale.

Some online applications and shopping carts chase away people because the form can’t be filled out accurately due to how its designed (International usage being a biggie here). Some forms ask for FAX numbers as a requirement. Some ask for a phone number but offer no reason. (It’s usually for credit card purchases, but never assume everybody knows this.) Sometimes the phone number fields make no extra field for international calling codes, on sites where this is important for global sales. Some don’t indicate they don’t accept cash or checks until AFTER you’ve entered your personal information. These are all reasons to leave a site. They are also reasons to not feel warm and fuzzy about shopping online in general.

Most of this could be solved with user instructions that communicate, calm fears and create confidence that the next step is logical, considerate, and necessary.

Do You Trust The Internet?

The demographics in an online forums for website designers and online marketers may be skewed, but I wanted to get an update on how people feel about purchases online and entering private information into forms and shopping carts?

Do you enter bogus information to get a form to work? Do you shy away from entering your birthdate and credit card information? What do you find scary, even with trustmarks and signs of secure servers (and, do you believe they mean security or are there just for show?)

If you would like to share your thoughts or read the comments by those who have, please visit Usability and Trust: How do you feel about credit card and private info? (You don’t have to register to read, but to post, you do.)

One thoughtful, clever quote from the thread that I felt especially productive for designers is this one by Ammon Johns:


“Credibility and trust are given, or not, to the particular site, the particular form.”

Related article:

Contactless payment proves popular with users

“Philips and Visa International have released the results of a new usability study of near field communication (NFC) and contactless payment technology, which showed that consumers like the convenience, ease of use and ‘coolness’ of making transactions with their mobile phones.”

Posted in Kim Krause Berg, SEO/M Industry General | Comments Off

Jakob Nielsen’s New Usability Book is Now Available

Posted on May 2, 2006 by cre8pc

Jakob Nielsen has co-authored a new book with usability consultant, Hoa Loranger, called Prioritizing Web Usability. It is available for shipping now from Amazon.

The Table of Contents is extensive. What caught my eye, however, is Chapter Five, which is called “Search”. They present both the search engine results side, as well as the search engine optimization side. Included are sections called “Black-Hat SEO Tricks”, “Keyword Overuse Backfires”, “How Search Engines Determine a Site’s Reputation” and “Architectural SEO”. It’s interesting how the relationship between SEO/M and usability continues to intertwine.

For the user centered design angle, the usual suspects are covered such as information architecture and navigation (example: “Match the Site Structure to User Expectations”), writing for the web (example: “Summarize Key Points and Pare Down”), typography, creating product pages, page elements, (example: “Should You Design for Scrolling?”), usability findings and handling multi-media. Plus more. It’s 406 pages in all.

Prioritizing Web Usability comes in paperback. Amazon is listing it for $31.50.

“The best-selling usability guru is back and has revisited his classic guide, joined forces with Web usability consultant Hoa Loranger, and created an updated companion book that covers the essential changes to the Web and usability today. Prioritizing Web Usability is the guide for anyone who wants to take their Web site(s) to next level and make usability a priority! Through the authors’ wisdom, experience, and hundreds of real-world user tests and contemporary Web site critiques, you’ll learn about site design, user experience and usability testing, navigation and search capabilities, old guidelines and prioritizing usability issues, page design and layout, content design, and more!” — Source, Amazon’s Editorial Review

Posted in Kim Krause Berg, Social Networking & Marketing | Comments Off

Dedication is Priceless and Worth Millions

Posted on April 26, 2006 by cre8pc

One of my favorite ways of offering my help is to be “on call” to clients. These are the folks who likely already worked with me and know that I don’t mind their out-of-the-blue, “Hey, are we doing this right?” emails.

And so it is that I managed to hook up with a relative newcomer to web design consulting, who has gone solo and begun to offer her services in holistic SEO/M/U/D (Seo, Marketing, Usability and Web Design.) I met her at a conference and was instantly impressed with her complete lack of fear for asking questions and her obvious wish to do everything ethically, professionally and correctly.

She’s taken on a client whose site requires a rebuild of an existing site. As I watch her work and offer tidbits of advice or input when she needs it, I can’t help but think that the very wise client who hired her is getting more than their money’s worth, even if she is a relative unknown with a tiny portfolio. She not only won’t rest until she’s given the project 120% of her best skills, but I can tell she truly cares about the long-term success of her client.

You can’t put a dollar amount on that.

Dare To Be Dedicated and How Dare You Show It!

I see this “extra something” in some members of Cre8asiteforums.

I’ve seen young people go from beginner to the point where they are teaching me stuff. In fact, my interest in CSS was prompted by a wonderful man from the UK who joined my old Cre8pc Website Promotion Club in the 1990′s, and who is now a Site Administrator for Cre8asiteforms. He never stopped learning and growing and this has made him an asset to both the forums, and his employer.

There are those persons in both the Usability/User Centered Design/User Experience Design and Search Engine Behavior, Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing industries who have been given some less than favorable labels because they are long-timers, well-known and often in the position to stir things up with their writings.

I’ve never understood why these people are publically assaulted with hurtful verbal remarks, that we know most of these people would never say to the faces of the people they are blasting. Whenever I see a big name written about in ugly terms, my response is to think the person is jealous, envious, has an ego the size of Jupiter and hasn’t learned how to communicate. Toddlers often react the same way ruthless writers do when they wish to have a public hissy fit.

I have a much different feeling about popular people, and it matters not if I agree or disagree with everything they write or the way they do their work. When someone shows dedication for their craft, and applies that dedication in their work, they most likely have earned my respect.

However, the moment they start negating someone else in public with a barrage of repulsive, vicious remarks, I value their opinion less. It signals to me that they are severely limited in the grace department and guided by their egos.

The Price of Achievement. The Rewards for Passion.

Would you prefer to hire someone who is putting their energy into bettering and testing the accuracy of their skills?

Would you wish to work with someone who finds all sources a free resource for introspection and growth? Or, do you feel more comfortable with attaching yourself to people, ideas and techniques, with no desire to consider other possibilities?

What I find interesting is the people who want the “Can you check this over?” assistance from me tend to lean on the side of “control freak”. This is a good thing in this instance!

One of my favorite moments in my work life was when one of my bosses introduced me to someone and said, “Kim is one of my over-achievers.” I was a single mom then, with two young ones, living on 4-6 hours of sleep while teaching myself web design and SEO. I was never an over-achiever in anything except making sure I got to the best dance clubs on weekends. But when he said this, I realized for the first time that I had a job doing something I really loved and wanted to do, and I wasn’t afraid to share this passion.

Like my new client who isn’t afraid to ask questions. She’s on fire, and it shows in her work.

I think you can tell the kinds of people who have discovered they are good at something and even better, that they adore this thing they do. They share what they know and share what they discover along the way. Sometimes those discoveries are met with resistance by those comfortable with the status quo.

It takes guts to express one’s opinion on the Web. I cringe when I see pioneers and popular people turned into mincemeat because they had the nerve to write their opinion or share observations from the field. There are ways to disagree with someone on the web and still show respect. It is possible to listen and ponder, without judgement or public flaming. Some well-known writers have been met with death threats (I’ve had two myself, for speaking out against “link-farms”) and calls to their homes, where family members are threatened.

The price some people pay for dedication to their craft can be harsh, and yet these same people, when you are lucky enough to hire them or work with them, are priceless.

Posted in Kim Krause Berg, Usability | Comments Off