(Length: 7 pages)

August 10, 2006

Death By A Thousand Cuts Kills Web Experience

When A Large Number Of Flaws Add Up To A Major Problem

by Moira Dorsey

with Harley Manning, Caroline L. Carney

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

When asked about the most important attributes of their favorite sites, online consumers say that ease of finding content and function and legibility are more important than superior content and function. But high-quality navigation and legibility are a rarity among the last 211 sites that Forrester evaluated. And when sites have flaws that hinder a user's ability to find, read and trust content, it adds up to a major problem — even when each flaw is minor on its own. To avoid delivering site experiences that fall victim to the cumulative effects of many minor problems, site managers should evaluate the most important users' paths, focus on fixing problems with well-known solutions first, and put a business-centric design process in place to avoid building flawed sites in the first place.