The Get Smart school of navigation

If you're looking at your website every day, you already know how to get around it, and may be the worst person to assess the usability from the point of view of the public.

I want to mention two usability issues which I am surprised to still come across.

Imagine that when users enter your store they need to pass through a door. Then another door. Then another door. Then they need to operate a secret series of switches to take an elevator to a basement... All very well for Maxwell Smart, but not the way you want your website to work, is it?

Splash/Entry Pages

Is there a good reason to have a splash page? Really? If there is one, please comment and let me know because I can't see any benefit to adding an extra click to the user experience and reducing your search engine visibility. Tony Bartlett posted about this same issue a year ago (I encourage you to go back and read if you didn't see it the first time around) and in the last 12 months I'm pleased to notice that I'm seeing less splash pages and more content: but I'm sad to report that it is still an issue. Still have a splash page on your site? Remove it. Really.

Links & Underlining

I recently saw a logo where the main text in the logo was underlined. It looked very strange and daggy to me and I realised that as it was underlined I expected it to be a link. I'm sure you did too; underlined text which doesn't go anywhere is bewildering and frustrating. Similarly users still expect links to be underlined: Okay so underlining isn't 'pretty', depending on your target market some compromise may be available. If you are absolutely against having underlined links then they absolutely must be a different colour to your body text! (preferably blue!) and underline and/or change colour on hover.

How many clicks?

Remember that you're probably already an expert on your own website, so you already know where to find what you're looking for! In some cases, several clicks will be appropriate - I know I've spent hours "Wiki-hopping" on Wikipedia. If you have a large amount of information, then sorting it into categories will help your users navigate - if you only have a small number of products or pages then adding extra clicks will aid frustration, rather than clarity.