Rules For User Friendly Websites 
From the examples we have given I have been trying to infer a set of rules that web masters who are concerned about the user friendliness of their sites should observe. Here's a first cut at the rules.
1 Home Page 
 Does the home page present a list of options that fits with what you want to do on the site? What this means essentially is: does the list of options cover all legitimate uses of the site?

Is there an “other” option (an ELSE clause)? This could be covered by a “Contact Us” option if that option includes a means to send a query by email. In this case it would be best if the Contact Us option was also headed “and Enquiries/Queries”.

Is there a search facility to search the site included on the home page? This can be helpful if the intended use of the site is slightly esoteric.

 2 Information Requested
 Where information that the user may not have readily to hand is to be solicited, are the relevant items of information required listed on the opening page to this section of the site? They should be; there is nothing more frustrating than having to spend time search for documents and then finding that the site has timed out on you. The items of information requested should all be covered by “other” options. We can probaly exempt from this the requirement for a credit/debit card when purchasing is involved, since that need should be obvious.

 3 Restrictions
If any restrictions are to be imposed, are these noted before any form-filling commences? Many sites have restrictions and few signal them in advance. Restrictions are most often geographical or financial. That is, items may not be able to be ordered from/delivered to specific geographic regions or may not apply to residents outside particular countries and some credit/debot cards may not be accepted. If any of this applies, or there are any other restrictions, these should be signalled in advance of the transatcion being started.

4 Telephone Contact
I've no idea how many or if any websites track telephone traffic to ascertain how much of this is rekated to their website but all websites owners should. Such analysis may well tell them more about the effectiveness of their website than they wish to hear.

 Other Rules For Website Owners 
There are a number of other rules questions that website owners might usefully ask themselves, partcularly if they have inherited the website they are managing and had no part in its initial creation.

1 What if any user testing has been carried out, by whom, and is this repeated periodically?
We've already given our paradigm for the ideal user tester, the IT illiterate grandmother living in Khazakstan. Failing this, who has been used to test the site? It must be obvious that knowledge of use of the site increases enormously over time and all kinds of statistics are generally available. But how much of this is used to assess the user friendiness of the site? Are statistics gathered on transactions aborted mid-transaction for instance? Are telephone transactions related to the site, or which could have been carried out on the site, trapped and recorded? And are user-friendliness tests repeated periodically or when a new version of the site is launched? Some sites have adopted the practice of releasing a beta version of the new site to the public, presumably as a form of user testing. I'm not generally in favour of getting the public to do your dirty work for you but accept that this could be a useful adjunct to other forms of user testing. In any case, small changes are made to most websites all the time and these should always be user-tested.

2 Unstated Assumptions 
 Does your site contain unstated assumptions? If the rules stated above are rigourously adhered to this shouldn't be the case. It is still worth checking. To repeat just one example already given, declaration of one's age does not necessarily imply that the client requires all the concessions that may be available with a given age. It is easy to ask the question, stupid to make the unstated assumption.

3 Contact Us
In an age when most commercial organisations are spending a great deal of money trying to forge links with potential customers it amazes me how many sites seem to deliberately make it diffcult to contact them. If the fear is of allowing a deluge of useless contacts, it is easy to avoid this by using filters on the Contact page. I have very rarely seen such filters used. Quite apart from contact details, if even these are displayed, it would be easy to use filters such as Purchasing Enquiry, Query, Complaint, etc. Why does nobody use them?

Website Versus Telephone

Website Versus Telephone

I've been given a couple of examples of website “failures” where transactions got sorted successfully over the telephone. They show obvious possibilities for cost savings on the part of vendors if only the vendors had the wit to see them (and do something about them).

The first concerns Air Fance (again). A friend was trying to book a flight that had morphed from a Flybe flight to an Air France one. Such arrangements between airlines are quite common. The friend tried booking on the Air France site and got lost, not too difficult in our experience. In frustration she phoned Air France to make the booking and talked to a very helpful Air France operative who managed to effect the transaction but only after the operative herself expressed extreme difficulty in using the Air France site. That smacks not only of inadequate user testing but also of inadequate operative training.

The second example, also referred to me by a friend, concerned an attempt at a ferry booking through Ferries Direct. He wanted to book a ferry from France to Corsica and went through all the usual data entry exercises of name of passengers, passport details (what price Schengen?) and payment method before finding that the booking he wanted was already full and therefore not available. Rather than try an alternative, which could have produced the same result, he phoned Ferries Direct and the matter was resolved over the phone, very helpfully.

So what is happening here? Effectively, telephone operatives in Customer Relations or some such department are bailing out the inadequate websites. By continuing with the inadequate websites the organisation is either incurring unnecessary costs or increasing the workload of their telephone operatives or, at worst, losing customers. I'm led to wonder whether there is any internal reporting mechanism to record how many times telephone operatives have to bail out the website and am fairly certain that no such mechanism exists; it's mere existence would suggest that the company had spotted the problem. And, once again, we would point out that any restrictions on a transaction should be stated at the point where a transaction is started rather than when the transaction is about to be completed.

Friend Steve has pointed out to me that some UK government sites list the documents that you will need to hand to complete given transactions. This avoids the frustration you can experience when, in the middle of a transaction, you find you need to search for some information required and the site times out on you while you are searching for it. It's a good example of good practice. In fact, listing that, along with the “what do you want to do” we have suggested earlier would resolve most of the problems we have exposed. Admittedly, the “what do you want to do” is implied by the main selections offered on the front page of sites but they almost all lack the “other” (else clause) possibility that could tell site managers what their site is lacking, if only they had the wit to see it and the willingness to learn.

French Version

Pour ceux des lecteurs qui préfèrent lire le français, voici la première entrée dans ce blog en français, traduite par mon amie Claudine Cellier

Du manque de facilité des sites-web.

Avez-vous, comme nous, quitté un site-web en jurant et en l'envoyant au diable, alors que vous essayiez de faire ce qui aurait dû être d'une simplicité enfantine ? Avez-vous déjà dû reconsidérer ce qui était demandé comme une saisie apparemment facile dans un champ, parce que cette saisie évidente était rejetée ?  Si c'est le cas, voici un blog où le récit de vos expériences sera chaudement accueilli.

Voici l'objectif si vous avez bataillé, comme beaucoup, probablement des millions d'autres.  En rapportant des expériences du manque de simplicité d'utilisation des sites-web, nous espérons encourager et/ou faire honte aux sociétés qui possèdent ces sites pour qu'elles les améliorent. Cela aidera tout le monde : les utilisateurs qui n'auront plus à se battre et les web-masters qui pourront ainsi répondre aux attentes des clients et augmenter leur activité. Tout le monde y trouverait son compte.  Nous relaterons nos propres expériences et, ce faisant, nos propres recherches, et si vous pouvez ajouter les vôtres, nous aurions rapidement une quantité d'avis à donner aux web-masters. Nous pourrions alors faire pression sur eux pour qu'ils améliorent leur site, au bénéfice de tous.

Tout logiciel est censé être soumis à des tests de facilités d'utilisation pour le public visé. Si le logiciel est un site-web public, alors il est ouvert à tout utilisateur lambda, au niveau national mais, plus probablement aujourd'hui, à l'échelle mondiale. Des chroniqueurs et des tenants de l'économie de marché se gargarisent de « mondialisation » mais tout indique que peu de sites-web, si ce n'est aucun, n'en comprend les conséquences. La source du problème est qu'il est trop facile de laisser faire les tests d'utilisation aux personnes qui ont créé le site ou à leurs collègues de bureau, sans doute tous très pointus dans le domaine.  Le véritable test devrait être fait par votre grand-mère de 90 ans, à moitié aveugle, habitant au Kazahkstan, qui a eu un PC à Noël et qui a simplement appris à se servir de la souris. L'ennui, c'est que, d'une part, on n'a pas toujours de telles grand-mères sous la main et que, d'autre part, bien que des équivalents pratiques puissent être facilement trouvées, les propriétaires de site ne veulent pas les chercher. Ils ont la flemme, même si c'est dans leur propre intérêt. Alors, ils ont besoin, dirons-nous, d'être... secoués.

Regroupons-nous et nous pourrons rendre la vie plus facile à tous.

Quelques exemples

Exemple 1: Le gouvernement britannique

Il y a des années, alors que je commençais à vivre en France mais que j'étais encore soumis aux impôts au Royaume-Uni, j'ai essayé de compléter une déclaration d'impôts sur Internet, mais le site de HMCR (Département du gouvernement du R.U. responsable de la collecte des impôts et des cotisations à la S.S. Britannique) réclamait un code postal britannique pour mon lieu de résidence. J'ai alors téléphoné au HMCR pour résoudre le problème. Il s'avéra qu'il y avait un code postal conventionnel pour les non-résidents au R.U.mais... qu'il avait négligé de l'indiquer sur le site ! Un an après, le même problème se posa à nouveau. Par bonheur, je ne suis plus, désormais, entre leurs griffes et je ne sais donc absolument pas si ce problème a été corrigé.

Cependant, j'ai récemment essayé d'obtenir une Carte Européenne d'Assurance-Maladie auprès des services de santé britanniques. J'ai tenté de le faire par Internet, pour découvrir que ce n'était possible que... si j'habitais au Royaume-Uni ou dans les Îles de la Manche. Aucun autre lieu de résidence n'était reconnu !

Exemple 2 : La S.N.C.F.

Quand je vais à Paris, je prends, habituellement, le train à Avignon. C'est la façon la plus simple de faire ce voyage. Je m'apprête à acheter un billet en ligne. Le site-web insiste alors pour connaître mon âge, ce que je trouve assez étrange pour la réservation d'un billet de train mais ce qui, en soit, n'est pas un problème. J'ai plus de 60 ans et lorsque je l'indique sur le site, la plupart des horaires de train disparaissent immédiatement. Pourquoi ? Parce que le site part du principe que je veux un billet à prix réduit en raison de mon âge et, par conséquent, seuls les trains pour lesquels ce genre de billet est disponible demeurent. En fait, je me fichais des réductions et pour obtenir un billet « normal » , je devais falsifier mon âge. Ce que j'ai fait !

Je ne sais pas du tout si la SNCF fait des statistiques sur l'âge de ses passagers mais, si c'est le cas, elle devrait s'assurer qu'elles ne sont pas totalement trompeuses !

Exemple 3 : Air France

J'ai récemment voulu réserver un billet sur un vol Air France au départ de Paris en direction de l'île caribéenne de St Martin. La page d'accueil indique qu'il faut choisir un site parmi plusieurs. Cela commençait mal ! Je ne voulais pas choisir un site, je voulais choisir un billet d'avion !

Il se trouve que les sites d'Air France sont ,chacun, dévolus à une aire géographique précise : France, Europe, Amérique du Nord, Caraïbe etc...Je crois qu'il aurait dû venir à l'esprit d'Air France que des gens voyagent parfois d'une zone géographique à une autre ! C'est, après tout, ce que font fréquemment les avions ! Et c'est ce que je me proposais de faire. Mon problème était de savoir quel site je devais choisir puisque je partais de France (un site) vers les Caraïbes (un autre site). Je regardai donc les deux et je fis, implicitement, une supposition : chaque site dévolu à une aire géographique supposait, apparemment, que vous commenciez votre voyage dans cet espace. Je choisis le site de la France. Se déploya alors un menu déroulant de destinations, toutes en France, et qui, bien sûr, incluait St Martin (qui fait encore officiellement partie de la France) . Je cliquai sur St Martin pour trouver que...ce n'était pas accepté comme destination. Pour abréger l'histoire (arrachage de cheveux, grincement de dents etc...) , en désespoir de cause, j'entrai SXM, le code officiel des compagnies aériennes qui desservent St Martin. Ça marchait ! Ce n'était pas dans la liste des destinations possibles mais c'est soudain apparu dans une liste ... de vols possibles !

Je pense qu'Air France a quelque travail à faire sur son site !

Exemple 4 : Hifx (spécialisé dans les transferts d'argent internationaux)

Récemment, un de mes amis a voulu faire un transfert d'argent du Royaume-Uni vers la France. Il décida d'utiliser les services de Hifx qui offrait la possibilité d'utiliser une carte bancaire pour faire un virement, de son compte vers leur compte au R.U. Mais le titulaire de la carte devait avoir une adresse au R.U. (ou dans les Îles de la Manche). Comme il habite en France, il ne pouvait pas répondre à cette demande.

Dans ce cas précis, le problème a été rapidement résolu à l'amiable par téléphone. Mais cela n'aurait pas dû être nécessaire. La conception de ce site-web est donc inadéquate.

Exemple 5 : Oxfam (O.G.N.pour la coopération et la solidarité internationale)

Début Décembre, j'achète habituellement des cartes de Noël et quelques petits cadeaux à une association humanitaire et, celle que je choisis est souvent Oxfam car j'ai travaillé pour eux comme bénévole après ma retraite.

L'année dernière, j'ai voulu le faire en ligne. Je parcourais alors le site d'Oxfam, sélectionnant ce que je voulais et découvris, à la page de paiement, que les cartes de Noël n'étaient pas disponibles à la vente en dehors du Royaume Uni. Je n'avais donc plus qu'à reparcourir ma commande, page par page, pour supprimer les cartes de Noël non valides. Cependant, le site était très lent à réagir, aussi, après deux pages, j'en ai eu marre et annulai toute ma commande.

Il aurait été plus facile pour le site d'afficher, à l'endroit où les cartes étaient choisies, qu'elles n'étaient pas disponibles à la vente hors du R.U.

Oxfam a dû ainsi perdre de l'argent l'année dernière et, pour autant que je le sache, les années précédentes, et en perdra sans doute dans les années à venir s'ils n'améliorent pas leur site.

Les règles qui pourraient être tirées de tout cela.

Des hypothèses infondées.

Les propriétaires de sites-web commerciaux semblent porter une grande attention à l'esthétique de leurs sites mais échouent souvent à répondre à la logique des hypothèses qu'ils font sur leurs clients. Cela ne requiert qu'un instant de réflexion pour découvrir de nombreuses évidences si des erreurs bénignes surviennent.

Je suis sûr que tout le monde est, un jour, tombé sur un site qui vous demandait si vous étiez un homme ou une femme. Cependant, il est bien connu que certaines personnes présentent un mélange de caractères physiques des deux « genres ». Ce sont les transgenres ou les transsexuels. Que sont-elles (ils) censé(e)s indiquer ? Pareillement, on m'a souvent demandé d'indiquer mon « titre » (civilité en français) : Mr, Mme, etc... mais je n'ai jamais vu Comte, Vicomte, Altesse, Prince etc...dans les possibilités offertes. Cela ne m'ennuie pas mais des personnes qui ont une haute idée de leur rang pourraient ne pas apprécier cette restriction. Une autre possibilité : la ELSE clause : si...sinon...(Voir plus bas) résoudrait le problème.

Ces exemples peuvent être considérés comme de peu d'importance mais ils illustrent parfaitement le manque de réflexion rigoureuse appliquée (souvent tacitement) à leurs hypothèses. Une économie mondiale demande à ce que n'importe quelles hypothèse posées soient testées dans ce contexte là et pas simplement dans un contexte local.

La ELSE clause

Dans les années 60, quand j'étais jeune et novice dans le secteur informatique, j'avais appris que « la structure conditionnelle » (faire un choix) dans le code devait toujours se terminer par une ELSE clause. Même quand les choix étaient, apparemment, les seuls possibles, comme par exemple, vrai ou faux, une ELSE clause devait être ajoutée. Peut-être que c'était la simple reconnaissance que vous n'êtes pas Dieu, mais c'était extrêmement important de se plier à cette discipline.  Il semble que ce soit passé de mode mais il faut y revenir car cela éviterait un certain nombre d'insuffisances que j'ai observées dans les sites- web.

Que voulez-vous faire ?

Je n'ai encore jamais vu un site- web avec une page d'accueil demandant :  que voulez-vous faire sur ce site ? Peut-être que cela ne répondrait pas à leurs préoccupations quant à l'esthétique du site mais il me semble que ce serait la question la plus évidente à poser. Oubliez les séduisants top-modèles (j'ai failli écrire les filles en bikini. Quel macho ! ) qui gambadent sur tout l'écran ! Le point essentiel est ce que vous, l'internaute, voulez faire.  Un menu déroulant de propositions telles que : parcourir, rechercher (quoi), acheter, entrer une demande etc... serait d'une aide énorme dans la plupart des cas, et éviterait aux propriétaires de site d'avoir à faire des hypothèses infondées. Cela, bien sûr, s'opposerait aux sites désireux de vous diriger vers ce qu'ils veulent, eux, que vous fassiez. Mais alors, où est la convivialité dans tout cela ? 

Contactez-nous

Une autre faute habituelle, selon moi, est que beaucoup de sites s'arrangent pour que ce soit très difficile pour les usagers de contacter leurs propriétaires. Pour ces derniers, c'est probablement un problème de coût. Ils ne veulent pas d'une équipe spéciale qui perdrait du temps à répondre aux interrogations de clients ou de clients potentiels. Mais les mêmes structures dépensent sans doute beaucoup d'argent à essayer d'établir des relations avec leurs clients ou à tenter d'en attirer de potentiels. Utiliser « Contactez-nous » est une façon évidente pour le faire et, depuis que les sites- web sont essentiellement un support en ligne, une adresse électronique (avec une garantie de réponse!) doit être la meilleure façon d'y parvenir. Et pourtant, beaucoup de sites ne donnent que l'adresse du siège social, avec, éventuellement, un numéro de téléphone. C'est juste délirant !

Quoi qu'il en soit, je voudrais que vous me contactiez et désirerais que vous me fassiez part de toute difficulté que vous avez rencontrée sur les sites- web en faisant ce qui aurait dû être simple et ne l'était pas. Vous pouvez le faire de deux façons : vous pouvez laisser un commentaire dans l'espace prévu à cet effet au bas de ce blog ou vous pouvez m'écrire à hugo.ian@wanado.fr. Je n'ai pas d'adresse de siège social et vous devez être en ligne puisque vous me lisez, donc, vous ne devriez pas avoir besoin de numéro de téléphone !

Two More Examples

Two friends have sent examples of the sort of thing that this blog is all about: websites that difficult operations that should be simple. The experiences of my friends are recounted below, with some comments added by me.

Example 6: Nikon

Friend No 1 had bought some eye-glasses with lenses made by Nikon and was trying to register her purchase on their website. Most manufacturers of small equipment and accessories encourage purchasers to register their purchases. Frankly I don't think it does a lot for the purchasers in most cases but is obviously of advantage to the supplier: the supplier gains the contact details of the client. So you'd expect the registration process to be made as simple as possible; but you could be wrong. This friend couldn't at first find how to register her glasses on the Nikon website and so resorted to the telephone number given on the site. She ended up writing the following letter to Nikon.

“I think your whole system needs to be looked at. I had enormous difficulty when trying to register my Presio Balance Transitions Signature with SeeCoat Plus UV  spectacle lenses. The telephone number for assistance on your website was answered by someone who was unable to help me, but told me to telephone 00442082471717. At the commencement of this call I clearly stated that I had bought lenses for my spectacles, but the lady who answered the phone obviously didn't pick this up and it took about 15 minutes before she realised I hadn't  bought camera lenses and so she couldn't help me.”

“She then told me to phone 01908214100, where I was told after some discussion that they couldn't help me either because I wasn't an optician. I then phoned my optician who helped me fill in the registration form which I eventually located on the website and which I couldn't have done on my own as it required information which was not on the card I was given with the lenses. I had missed out certain sections when initially trying to fill in the form and when, as instructed by the optician, I went back to fill them in the result was to clear the whole form! This happened several times.
The process of registering my lenses took over an hour.”

“Your website is the worst I Have ever used and your telephone operators are not very helpful.
I will be reporting you as a company with a very bad website and will not be buying your products in future.”

What stands out for me here is the obvious inadequacies of user testing of the website, with the result that would should be an opportunity for CRM becomes a disaster.

Example 7: Online Train Ticket Booking

Friend No 2 wanted to book a train ticket. It can reasonably be assumed that train companies very much want people to do this so you would think they would make the process as simple and convenient as possible. Once again, think again. He has added his own comments to his experience, below. So I won't elaborate further.

“Booking a train ticket in the UK online includes a step that not only turns out to be unnecessary but in my case has also led to a time-wasting extra 4 mile journey to collect the ticket!”

“Train ticket booking websites include a mandatory phase in which you must specify the station at whose machine you will collect the paper ticket, and only then does it give you a voucher with a code number to input at the machine. The problem is that my local station (Winnersh), which is only 300 yards from where I live, and from where I will be travelling, and where I therefore wish to collect the ticket, does not appear in the list of available stations - even though it has a machine. I am therefore forced to specify a different station, in my case 3 miles away, and assume I must travel there just to collect my ticket.”

“I have complained about this to my local train operating company (TOC) only to be told that in reality no matter which station I have specified I can collect my ticket from my local station, or indeed from any other station. Mandating that a station be specified from an approved list is therefore not only an unnecessary and meaningless step in the process, but misleading. A representative from the TOC has said that the issue about my station being missing from the list would be passed to their website administrator; but that was more than 6 months ago and nothing has happened yet. But in any case why not eliminate this step from the process altogether and simplify the booking process?”

“From memory this applies to ‘South West Trains’ and ‘First’ booking sites – the train operators who run on my local line, but since they all take their data from a common underlying database it probably also applies to other operators”.

“There is of course a much wider usability issue for train ticket booking websites. Why can’t we print the actual ticket at home in much the same we do for plane journeys, and other countries do for trains? That would abolish the other annoying part of the current process, namely, having booked the ticket, possibly having to join a queue for the machine at the station to print it out.”

The ELSE Clause Explained

It has occurred to me that since this blog is aimed at, mostly, simple folk trying to do simply things the significance of the ELSE clause may need explaining; so here goes. Back in 1965 a couple of guys called Bohm and Jacopini demonstrated in a paper published then that only two control constructs were needed to control the sequence of instructions that were executed in a computer program. The first construct was in itself called SEQUENCE, which simply meant one instruction was executed after another in the sequence in which they appeared in the program. The second was called DO WHILE, which catered for conditional statements. It presupposed two or more conditions (true-false, black-white or whatever) and meant that if one of these conditions was true then an associated set of instructions should be executed and if the other condition(s) was/were true then another set of instructions should be executed. DO WHILE is not a very obvious concept to get your head round and so a more or less equivalent construct, IF THEN ELSE, was often used instead. This indicated that IF (e.g. true, black) applied a given set of instructions was to be executed and IF (e.g. false, white) applied then another set of instructions should be followed. ELSE at the end was a kind of “get out of jail” clause; it catered for anything that might have been overlooked in the conditions listed in the program. It is for most practical purposes equivalent to the “Other” box if one appears at the bottom of a list of tick boxes on a form.

ELSE allows for any conditions which the programmer may have overlooked or not considered relevant when writing the code. IT THEN ELSE is effectively the construct that applies when you are asked to make choices or have to fill in a form that contains alternatives. The alternatives and choices offered are those that the programmer has considered and written code for. But programmers (and I'm sure you will believe this) can make mistakes. They may think they have written code for all the conditions (choices, possibilities) that can occur but may, in fact, have overlooked some. In that case the ELSE clause, if they think to add it, gets them out of jail.

There is a slight problem in what code to write if the ELSE clause is activated, since it relates to a condition that hasn't been considered. In some situations it can safely be ignored as irrelevant. In others it may properly result in the display of an error message. However, it can also be relevant and not an error. I don't know of any standard method of dealing with this situation but would suggest that it should result in an automatic email to the site owner, showing the condition that has been neglected. That, of course, assumes that the site owner will accept emails from outside on situations that have been overlooked. I think it's called CRM (customer relationship management).

User Unfriendliness

Have you, like us, ever been left swearing and cursing when trying to do something that should be quite straightforward on a website? Have you ever had to second-guess what is required as an entry on an apparently simple field, because the obvious entry is rejected? If so, this is a blog where an account of your experiences will be warmly welcomed.

The point is this. If you have struggled so probably have many, maybe many millions, of others. By recounting experiences of user unfriendliness on websites we hope to encourage/shame the companies that own the sites to improve them. That will help everyone: users will no longer have to struggle and site owners will improve customer satisfaction and increase customer activity. It's a win-win situation. We'll relate our own experiences and be doing our own researches and, if you can add your experiences, we should quickly have a very useful amount of feedback to give to site owners. Then we can put pressure on site owners to improve their sites for the benefit of all concerned.

All software is supposed to be subjected to tests of ease of use by its intended users. If the software is a public website, then the intended user is Jo Public, perhaps nationally but more probably globally nowadays. Commentators and marketeers like to talk glibly of the global market but evidence from websites suggests that few, if any, understand the implications. The root problem is that it's all too easy to leave user testing to the people who created the site or their colleagues in the office, probably all very IT literate. The real test would be to expose the site to your 90-year old granny who's going blind, lives in Kazahkstan, got a PC for Christmas and has just learned to use a mouse. Trouble is, such grannies are not always available, although useful equivalents can usually be found if site owners want to look for them. Site owners who can't be bothered, even when it's in their own interest, need, shall we say...... prompting? Join in and we'll make life easier for everyone.

Some Examples

Example 1: UK government

Years ago, when I had started living in France but was still subject to the UK tax system, I tried to file a tax return online only to find that the HMRC website insisted on a UK postcode for my place of residence. I had to phone HMRC to get the problem sorted. It turned out that HMRC had an artificial postcode for those not resident in the UK but hadn't bothered to put this in the website. A year later the same problem occurred; I'm mercifully out of their clutches now so have no idea whether the online problem has been fixed.

However, I recently tried to obtain card for health insurance outside my country of residence but within Europe (EHIC). I have to get this from the UK health service. I tried to apply online only to find that I can do this only if I live in the UK or Channel Islands; no other place of residence is recognised.

Example 2: SNCF

When I go to Paris I normally take the train from Avignon; it's the obvious way to make the journey and I can purchase a ticket online. The website insists on knowing my age, which I find rather strange for a train ticket booking but not in itself an apparent problem. I am over 60 and if I enter this on the website most of the trains schedules immediately disappear. Why? It's because the site assumes that I will require a reduced-price ticket because of my age and therefore only the trains on which such tickets are available will be of interest. In fact I don't care about the reduced-price tickets but in order to obtain a normal one I have to falsify my age, which is what I do. I've no idea whether SNCF keeps statistics on the age of its passengers but if it does it has ensured that they will be completely misleading.

Example 3: Air France

I recently wanted to book a ticket on an Air France flight from Paris to the Caribbean island St Martin. The Air France Home Page asks you to choose one from its several websites. That was a bad start; I didn't actually want to choose a website, I wanted to choose a plane ticket. The Air France websites are each devoted to a particular geographical area: France, Europe, North America, the Caribbean, etc. I think it must have occurred to Air France that people sometimes travel from one geographical area to another; it is, after all, what planes frequently do. In fact, this is what I was proposing to do. The problem for me was which website to choose, since I wanted to travel from France (website) to Caribbean (website). So I had a look at both websites and deduced an unstated assumption; each geographical area website apparently assumes you are starting your journey in that area. So I chose the France website. This provides a drop-down menu of possible destinations, all in France, which of course includes St Martin (it is still officially part of France). So I clicked on St Martin only to find that is is not allowed as a destination. To cut a long story short (tearing hair, gnashing teeth, etc) in despair I entered the airlines official destination code for St Martin, SXM. It worked! It wasn't in the list of possible destinations but up popped a list of possible flights. I think Air France has some work to do on its website.

Example 4: HifX

A friend of mine recently wanted to make a money transfer from the UK to France. He decided to use the HifX service, which offered the option of using a debit card to make the transfer from him to them in the UK. However, the debit card owner had to have a UK (or Channel Isles, etc) address. Since he lives in France he couldn't supply this. In the event the problem was sorted quickly and amicably by a phone call; but that shouldn't have been necessary. The website design was inadequate.

Example 5: Oxfam

At the beginning of December I usually buy Christmas cards and some small gifts from a charity and the charity I usually choose is Oxfam (Oxford Famine Relief) as I worked for them as a volunteer after my retirement. Last year I had to do it all online. I went through the Oxfam website picking what I wanted and found, only when I got to the payment page, that Christmas cards were not available to be sent outside the UK. What I then started to do was go back page by page to delete the invalid Christmas cards. However, the site was very slow in responding and so, after a couple of pages, I got fed up and scratched the whole order. It would have been simple for the site to display, at the point that the cards were chosen, that they were not available outside the UK; not doing so cost Oxfam money last year and, for all I know, may have done so in previous years and will probably do so in the future if they don't improve their website.

Rules that can be derived

Unwarranted assumptions

Commercial website owners seem to pay a lot of attention to the cosmetic appearance of their sites but frequently fail to address the logic of assumptions they make about clients. It requires only a moment's thought to discover numerous obvious if sometimes fairly trivial errors. I'm sure everyone must have encountered a website that asks you if you are male or female. However, it is very well known that some people have a mixture of physical characteristics of both genders; they are transgender, sometimes known as “shemales”. What are they supposed to put? Similarly, I have often been asked to enter my “title” (Mr, Mrs, etc) but never seen Lord, Viscount, HRH, Sir, etc, in the options offered. It doesn't affect me but some status-conscious people might resent the constraint. A simple “other” option (the ELSE clause; see below) would resolve the issue.

Those examples may not be considered of much consequence but epitomise the lack of rigorous thought applied to (usually unstated) assumptions. A global economy requires that any assumptions made should be tested in that context, not simply a local one.

The ElSE clause

When I was young and green in the computer industry, in the 1960s, I was taught that any conditional (make a choice) statement in code should always be ended with an ELSE clause. Even when choices were apparently all inclusive as in, for instance, true or false, an ElSE clause should be added. Maybe that was simply an acknowledgement that you are not God or that even Homer can nod but it was extremely important as a discipline. It seems to have gone out of fashion and it needs to come back into fashion as it would have prevented a number of the inadequacies I have observed in websites.

What Do You Want To Do?

I've never yet seen a website with a home page asking: what do you want to do on this website? Maybe it conflicts too much with cosmetic layout concerns yet it seems to me the most obvious question to ask. Forget the winsome models (I nearly wrote bikini-clad girls; Oh sexist me!) dancing across the screen, the most important point is what you, the surfer, want to do. A drop-down menu of suggestions such as browse, search (for what), purchase, enter an inquiry, etc, would be enormously helpful in most cases and would avoid the site owner having to make unwarranted assumptions. That, of course, would conflict with sites wanting to lead you along to what they want you to do but where is customer friendliness in all this?

Contact us

Another common mistake (in my view) is that many sites make it very difficult for users to contact the site owners. For them, this is presumably a cost issue; they don't want staff to have to spend time answering queries from clients or potential clients yet the same organisations probably spend a great deal of money trying to foster “relationships” with their clients or trying to entice potential clients. Using “contact us” is an obvious way to do this and since websites are essentially an online medium an email address (with a guaranteed response!) has to be the best way. Yet many sites give just a HQ address with, maybe, a telephone number. That's just crazy.

Anyway, I want you to contact me and I want to hear of any difficulties you have had in doing what should be simple on websites and wasn't. You can do that in one of two ways: you can leave a comment in the space allowed for it at the bottom of this blog or you can write to me directly at hugo.ian@wanadoo.fr. I don't have a HQ address and you have to be online to read this so you shouldn't need a telephone number.