Beware of Time Bandits!

What’s the most valuable commodity these days?

Time.

We all suffer a time deficit—whether we’re 16 or 66. No one has enough time.

So, one of our most important precepts for websites is: “Don’t waste my time!” Call it mStoner’s second law. [Our first? “Your website is your most important communication.”] Websites should enable people to find what they want quickly and easily. Sometimes (indeed, often!) all that someone wants from a website is an email address or a phone number, and nothing should get in their way.

At mStoner, we view “Don’t waste my time!” as the most important corollary of Don’t Make Me Think, which is, of course, the title of Steve Krug’s remarkable book—the single best book about web development. Usability and speed shape the visitor’s experience on your website. And that experience can either greatly enhance brand perception, or diminish it.

Here are some ways you can ensure that your website and other Internet communications don’t waste the valuable time of your visitors: 

**Remember that many of your visitors may still be on dialup lines, so keep page sizes as small as you can—especially at the top levels. No one likes waiting for a site to download, only to find out that it doesn’t contain what they need anyway.

**If you have a splash screen, get rid of it: It gets in the way of visitors finding what they really want. Remember, a visitor may want sit through your Flash animation and see how clever you are. But, more likely, they need contact information or the spelling of your president’s name. I never, ever want to click on a splash screen or watch a Flash animation load when I first visit a website. I want to view rich media when I want to and only then. Am I that strange? I don’t think so.

**Your visitors probably don’t know your organization nearly as well as you do. So your website should be organized in a way that they can understand where to find what they’re looking for-and the language you use should speak to them, not to you. Do they[/] know they are “prospective” students? Do they know what a “Development Office” does? Don’t make assumptions-make your site so intiutive that visitors speed along to their destination.

**While some visitors to your website will be pointers and clickers, others will be searchers. How does your search engine work? Does it give thousands of results?or, more importantly, the ones that people really need? Take a look at the search on the University at Buffalo’s website : try searching for “financial aid” from the home page and see the results you get. This is search that really works!

**Write concise, clear copy for your site. Your news articles should have punchy (or at least clear) titles and topic sentences that let people know what they’ll find as they read the article.

**If you’re sending HTML email newsletters, test your messages with different email readers on different systems. Don’t make your readers wade through broken graphics (or code, which is even worse!) in order to read your message. 

Your website can have quality content, lots of marketing features, and rich visuals, but please respect your visitors and readers and focus on information architecture, usability, and clear content to help people find what they need. Don’t waste my time—or that of other visitors to your site.

Note: this is the lead article in our email newsletter, Intelligence. If you’re not on our list, sign up for your own issue.