Rant on Tuesday

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Rant on Tuesday

In terms of evolution, I’d have thought that as a species we’d have learnt a good few things about living and creating things for members of our species and also for anything else that falls outside of our known definition of homo sapien. So why am I constantly struck by a feeling that certain social media applications are still being constructed to feed the developer/designer’s ego rather than user benefit? Are these applications too hastily and badly put together in order to be first to go live?

I think such is the case with two sites I visited early this morning.

In my opinion, both sites have front end and placement issues for the login and registration functions. But importantly, this area where the sites fall down on slick functionality is fundamental to users firsthand experience of the site. So if the login and registration processes have not been planned, thought through properly, designed to facilitate more than a single user error scenario, coded up correctly and UAT’d thoroughly, you will end up with no shows like me. Even worse is when the submit buttons do not respond.

Why should I waste my time trying to figure out what I have done wrong when in fact I have done nothing wrong but type in an incorrect username or password. Surely there are professionaly designed login/registration templates freely available online that operate properly and in a friendly way for user error and can also respond accordingly. Why did they not search for and buy the best. Skimping here is bad for business in the future. One of the sites does respond but that is it. It offers no other solution to my dilemma which is that I cannot recall my username or password. Now what?

Well I tell you what - I don’t stick around. I go somewhere else.

The lesson here is attention to detail. I do not know why the login/register functionality is flawed at these sites. Why haven’t the owners paid attention to this area? Amateurs in a big boys world? Maybe they forgot that we users are not rocket scientists, clairvoyents or able to fully appreciate and show the love because they had a bad day at the office when these functionalities were thrown together. But I do know that if they had bothered to think things through properly with a view to KISS, I’d be a happy user. They also forgot the most basic tenet about supplying a customer a service - we know dross when we see or use it.

Most forgotten password functionality I have seen online actually acknowledges your input and tells you if the email address is valid at the site or not. One of the two sites prefers not to.

Now, if I know this and I am not a tekkie, why then for the love of blogging, don’t they take a hint and do something about replacing the dross they have in place with something that works properly.? But adding insult to injury is the total lack of ability to deal with the complaints I have made previously. Maybe they don’t like bad press so X’d my mails. Bad mistake.

Rant on Tuesday