Trending Upward

The topic of my post today was going to be about analtyics metrics (visits, unique visits, page views) and what those terms actually mean.

My thoughts changed, though, as I was reading through the posts of the day. Anne Peterson wrote a great post about usability and how sometimes it’s just impossible to test for every possible type of user.

We run into this quite frequently in World Campus because our user demographics vary so much. Anne mentions to keep it simple with usability testing and I completely agree. I might go even further and say keep it simple when it comes to design, developing, and writing copy for your website. Sometimes we spend so much time developing and creating for the minority of our users (the exceptions) that we forget about the majority of our users.

Obviously there are times when you *have* to develop for every single exception to the rule, and there’s nothing we can do about it. At times, however, it *is* possible to keep it simple and design, develop, and write for the majority of users. The more you try to satisfy *every* user, the more you start to confuse or lessen the experience for the *average* user.

Example. Right around the time I first arrived at World Campus, I remember a somewhat controversial decision was made to require students to have broadband internet access. I’m not sure of the exact reason, as I was brand new at the time, but I can gather that a lot of it had to do with the user and learning experience we wanted to give our students.

Actually web analytics can help to make a decision like this. In our case, we knew that for fiscal year 2006, 91% of our users were using some type of broadband connection. So why were we continuing to design and develop for dial-up users when it wasn’t giving the majority of our users the rich user experience they could have?

Using the same logic, with user testing, if you don’t have the time (or the budget) to test a ton of users, why not focus on your average user? The majority of users.

I think we all agree that it would be wonderful to be able to make our sites the most user-friendly, engaging, productive sites for *all* our users, but usually the reality is that it’s just not possible. So, when you can’t please everyone, please the majority.

Like Anne mentions, if we get bogged down thinking of the exceptions, nothing will ever get done. There are *always* going to be exceptions. If we keep it simple and make our websites the most user-friendly we can for the majority of our users, we’ll still be way ahead of the game.

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