sugarenia.com

Today I had a completely absurd experience in a supermarket. Yes, in a supermarket.

This particular supermarket, member of a well-known international chain, decided to proceed in a radical change of its internal structure. And by change I mean a complete mix up in the way the corridors were placed.

Noone admits it, but now the store became much more difficult to navigate, especially if you were a devoted client,went there often and memorized the plan of the building. Maybe the new structure serves some revolutionary design concept, I don’t know.But all I saw while my brief disoriented trip in the area was faces equally disoriented as me, and people asking navigational questions the employees all the time, eventhough new shiny navigational signs were placed all over the store.

Excuse me, but that’s a good marketing concept?

And don’t make me start on how a corridor happened to be placed in the middle of the s/m, where the main pillar of the building is placed. Now the pillar blocks a 80% of the corridor entrance, resulting in a dramatic reduction of clients shopping in this particular area, since they cannot see what kind of products are sold there! Not to mention that disabled users would never be able to access the particular corridor…

I would expect more from a company as successful as this. Shame.

What’s the moral and its use in web design?

• Never change the position of your navigational links and menu while on the same page. It completely disorients naive users, which consist a whole lot of your clients.
• Use consistent styles and colour in your menus, and don’t use them anywhere else in your pages.
• Try to avoid Flash menus and instead use simple text links, or image links with the alt attribute defined.
• If you have no other option than Flash, use at all costs a footer menu with simple text links to all the main sections of your site.
• Don’t hide information : if a section of your site has further subsections, include some hints or a more informative title than i.e. “Me” for a page that contains info about you as well as a simple contact form.
• Place your important content as well as your menu as close to the top as possible, not many users scroll further than one page.
• Finally, include a link to your index in all of your pages. I know I found the entrance/exit of the store easily, but web browsing is a lot more confusing.

The menu of your site is one of the most important assets you have while designing in the web. Treat it with respect and it will eventually pay back.

Usability, Design, Accessibility

This entry was posted on Monday, December 5th, 2005 at 7:19 pm by Sugar and is filed under Accessibility-Usability, Rantings, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.