Preventing Costly Site Usability Mistakes - #sepodcast 223

According to the episode, the six mistakes are: not keeping it simple, designing for looks rather than usefulness, forgetting or misspelling important words, giving too many options, failing to make the desired action obvious, and providing no communication channels for visitors or customers.

A psychological study on a university campus found that a stand selling four types of jam outsold a stand with 30 types by a significant margin. More choices make the option of doing nothing more attractive, so reducing options on a site leads to more decisions and more purchases.

The hosts say smaller e-commerce brands must provide a phone number, a physical address, and a way for customers to resolve order issues. Without these, visitors will bounce and buy from a competitor. A live chat feature is also recommended if someone is available to staff it.

Missing a key descriptive word, like the word tankless when advertising tankless water heaters, means you attract the wrong visitors and miss your most profitable customers. It also connects to keyword strategy: ranking for the wrong term wastes optimization effort on lower-value traffic.