I just finished reading a rather disappointing e-mail item from IT Business, that appears to be sponsored by Telus. When they were Clearnet, they were customer-focused and very very good marketers. Unfortunately, Telus bought them, and things have changed.
I opened the click-through e-mail to find out more about Telus' videoconferencing capabilities. Instead, I spent maybe 30 seconds trying to figure out how to scroll.
My touch-pad scroll was disabled. My arrow keys were disabled. My Pg Up and Down keys were disabled. Finally I clued in -- see if you can figure it out.
So the time I could have spent absorbing their message about video teleconferencing, I spent being irritated by their clever navigation scheme. And I chose to write this blog article instead of reading the case study, or finding out what their product can actually do for me.
Behavior is Hard to Change, Don't Try
I hear the phrase "educate the customer" every so often. This is code for "make them do it our way". It's hard to change people. It's much easier to be where they are, help them do what they are already trying to do.
Navigation is a good example. People now have some expectations about where menu items will be, and how to move around on a page. Why waste your energy teaching them some new method, when you can spend those precious seconds providing some value added?
Let's just make the point really clearly: if you make your customers or prospects spend time on something that isn't ADDING value, then you're spending some of your brand capital.
Okay, enough ranting from me. Let's hear what the experts have to say about this.
Is the navigation in this info-advert stupid, or is it Susan?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to staticfree.info/graphics for the animated gif.
Thanks to web expert Tema Frank for her useful comment (see below)
