Moving the meter

One of my favorite books on web design is Don't Make me Think by Steve Krug.

In addition to being a crystal clear guide to thinking about web usability, the book has plenty of nifty illustrations that bring the points home. One of my favorites is a series of drawings of users with little meters next to their heads. As the user gets frustrated, the meter fills up. When it hits the top, they vanish.

I think its a great metaphor, and I end up using "the meter" to guide my own thinking about building usable web sites.

Every user has a meter that moves up (or down) as they move through your site. If you reach the top of the meter, the user gets fed up and leaves. If you can make it to the end of your conversion flow without filling up the meter, you get the sale (or the lead, or the trial, or whatever else your goal may be).

Here's the trick: every user has a different meter. And you have no way of knowing, or controlling, how big or small that meter will be. A user who really, really wants to buy what you're selling may have a great big meter than you'd have a hard time filling all the way to the top. Another user, in the middle of a bad day, may have a little tiny meter that's almost full before you even get a chance to make a first impression.

Since you don't know how much space you have to work with, you're left with only one option: do everything you can do avoid moving your visitor's meter in the wrong direction. Sure, you can always justify one more minor annoyance -- "they've come this far, they won't really mind". But that's a dangerous game, because you never know which minor problem will be the one that fills a user's meter and sends them off to your competitor.

What makes the meter go up? All users are different, but the following are good bets to annoy users and raise the meter:

• Anything that slows things down: Long load times, 404 errors, unneccessary flash
  
• Information that's hard to find, or isn't where it seems like it should be
  
• Fluffy marketing-speak that doesn't actually say anything
  
• Asking for a user to give you their personal information unless you have a really good reason
  
• Hidden charges or other surprises ("oh, we didn't mention how expensive shipping was?")
  

The good news is that you can also make the meter go down by doing things like:

• Having the right information appear right where the user expects it
  
• A clean, professional design that's appropriate to the target audience
  
• Content that sounds like it was written by a human being instead of a corporate buzzword marchine

The bottom line: Every time you consider adding an element to your site -- text, an image, flash, a new feature -- ask yourself first: "Is this going to move the meter? And in which direction?"