A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

online cus-

tomer experience

. In this chapter, we will explore different practical actions that companies 

can take to create and maintain satisfactory online experiences. An indication of the effort 

Box 11.4

Why do websites torture their visitors?

Bruce Tognazzini was Apple’s 66th employee, developing the company’s first usability 

guidelines and founding its Human Interface team. Almost 30 years later, he’s a prin-

cipal at Nielsen Norman Group and still making his feelings known when companies 

commit design errors.

The main web usability/user experience mistakes

The level of open hostility that websites display is breathtaking. For every Bed, Bath & 

Beyond, with its smooth, comfortable user experience, there are a thousand amateur-

ish websites that appear to feel that torturing their customers is a really good idea.

In the main, this has resulted from striving to achieve mediocrity, rather than excel-

lence, but it is as devastating to the user experience as if they had set out to achieve 

hostility.

The worst single fault is throwing away the user’s work. You see this in travel sites, 

where the user spends an hour selecting airline tickets for dates five months hence, 

then tries searching for a hotel for that same period, only to find the site has thrown 

away the dates and is assuming the user wants a hotel for tomorrow night.

The customer playing ‘what if’ with different airlines and different hotels may have to 

enter the same group of dates as many as a dozen times during these transactions –  

often resulting in their making a mistake the last, fateful time, and ending up with 

worthless airline tickets for the wrong dates.

Then there’s the worst single bit of information that can be discarded: the user’s 

decision to uncheck the box saying, ‘Yes! I want you to spam me 14 times a day for the 

rest of my life!’ that appears embedded in the order page.

Go back to change anything on that page, and they’ll turn the checkbox back on. 

How do these people imagine customers feel later when the spam they specifically 

rejected starts rolling in?