{"id":151,"date":"2006-11-30T13:30:38","date_gmt":"2006-11-30T19:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/2006\/11\/30\/simple-is-as-simple-plans\/"},"modified":"2006-11-30T13:31:18","modified_gmt":"2006-11-30T19:31:18","slug":"simple-is-as-simple-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=151","title":{"rendered":"Simple Is As Simple Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chad the Elder has a cri de coeur<\/em>\u00a0that is music to my ears.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He’s talking about “e-business” sites – shopping sites for places like Amazon, Best Buy, yadda yadda – and a key problem many of them have<\/a>; they’re just not designed for real people to use them.<\/p>\n

He wants the companies to…:<\/p>\n

Make it Easy<\/strong> to use: The other day I was trying to find some information on a local hotel\/water park. The web site was chock full of neat looking Flash animation and graphics. But when I tried to find out how much it would cost to use the water park on a particular day I entered a cyber-hell of being forced to follow link upon link upon link (while animation played for each one) until I was finally able to find what I was looking for. And then, when I was curious about the room rates, I had to go through the same rigmarole again only to eventually be instructed to “call for information.” Arghhh! If I wanted to call, I would have done that in the first place. The whole idea of visiting the web site was so that I didn’t have to make a fargin’ phone call.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sort of thing tells me I’ll have work to do for\u00a0a long, long time.\u00a0 It’s almost a game, trying to guess why a “e-business” site turns out like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The usual suspects:<\/p>\n