Web Pathology: A site for yourself, not for customers

    Quite often, in consultations on UX design, many clients have to repeat the same thing and it makes me a little nervous. Therefore, I decided to periodically briefly publish the most popular topics, in the naive hope that people would read them and that these topics would not arise so often. Something like Lebedev's “Covododstvo”. In my case, this turns out to be some kind of UX leadership, which in Russian is amusingly read as “ear-training”. The logical name for this proposed series of articles is “Frequent UX Design Pathologies,” which can be shortened to “Web Pathologies.” Do not be afraid of the terrible word “pathology”, it means only a systematic deviation from normal development and is generally harmless.

    Many companies regard the creation of their own website as the arrangement of their own apartment. They carefully select the wallpaper pattern, parquet color, curtain fabric, chandelier shape, place icons, hang hunting paintings and portraits of heads of families with salmon caught. Russian style in the kitchen, art deco in the living room, Suprematism in the bedroom. Carefully open the pages of family albums on the sideboard and wipe off dust from all three thousand volumes of novelists of the last century (so that guests have something to read). After everything is ready, the site opens and the first visitors to the banking site quietly slide down the wall ...

    You have already seen this many times. Sites with a welcoming speech, with the mission of the company, with the milestones of her working career, with panegyrics to her holy team and the wisdom of leadership, with the dollar exchange rate and horoscope, with the address of the CEO and his photograph in the style of “I and my glorious business”. Sites made by companies for themselves. In a mild form, such a problem exists in almost all sites. It even happens that they forget to write on the sites - what exactly is the company doing and what products it sells.

    Do not think that this is some kind of contagious form of stupidity, not at all. This is a completely natural phenomenon for all people, relating to the "mental traps" of our consciousness. It also manifests itself when choosing a gift for your friend on his birthday. After all, you need to choose a gift that your friend will like, and not you yourself. That is, you must choose, not using your own taste and experience, but using the experience of your friend (or at least your idea of ​​him). If you specifically think about it, then you will immediately find yourself in this very trap and quite naturally buy what you consider interesting for yourself.

    In the same way, companies make websites for themselves, while completely forgetting about customers, and if they themselves find themselves in the role of a client, then they rightly begin to resent, saying, “where are the goods? where are the prices? What kind of delusional website have you done here? ”because having client experience at that moment they can judge the site’s compliance with their goals and objectives. I’ll say an even more terrible thing now: “Your site doesn’t have to be liked by you at all.” But it must be liked by your customers.

    And here UX design enters the scene, the main task of which is to understand the experience of your users (User Experience) and design a website based on the results. I hope that after reading this short note, most of you will say about this mysterious UX design: “Ah, now I understand!”.

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