I was watching a commercial on TV today that told me to go to their web site to get more information on a specific subject. I went to the site and spent about 5 minutes searching their site for the information I wanted. I scoured the main page, used their search box and even read their entire site map and still could not find the page.
If you’re going to advertise (go here and then do this) it’s really important to allow your customers to get to your data by a minimum of two clicks or a simple text search. If you can’t get to the information you want quickly, you are going to loose your audience to clicking off. Two real-world examples of this are HP.com’s web site. Anyone that know this site knows what I mean. Another example is a phone tree. Many companies have eliminated the “0′ option to get an operator and get out of phone tree hell. Generally, if I encounter a vendor I can’t hit 0 and get out of the tree I won’t bother buying from them.
Please think about your customers when developing a site. Are you making it easy for them to get the information or are you trying to dazzle them with your web design skills?