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36 Comments
- NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Wow, Steve jobs wasted his time. I wonder if he was drunk.
- rudy23, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11"Sites without Digg, del.icio.us, and Fark bookmarks"
Yeah OK. - ThrasherC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Lame...I love Digg, but I really don't want to start seeing a Digg This button on every freaking site I visit. Also, if I see one more signature on an e-mail that's 50 lines long and contains the person's home and work phone, cell, work address, home address, wife's name, dog's name, social security number, favorite quote, personal motto, and astrological sign, I'm going to scream. When you start trying to trace info back through e-mail threads they turn into novels instead of a couple of pages of legitimate communication.
Overall, this list had a couple of good points, but I disagree with several others. - RadicalBender, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Exactly. Digg/Fark/Delicious links on blog posts are going to be the "GET NETSCAPE NOW!" buttons of the Web 2.0 era.
- curmudgeon7205, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I would add those complex and time-consuming flash screens that open up the website and force the user to find the "click here to stop" link. Those things are more a developer's self-promotion than anything of use and are, more often than not, an excuse for the user to move on to something/where else
- popstalin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8They're all good tips but they seem pretty much common sense to me. I think Guy should write a post about "14 reasons why people don't use common sense on the Internet."
- scuzzman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+510: Case sensitive user names and passwords. I know: user names and passwords that are case sensitive are more secure, but I’m more likely to type in my user name and password incorrectly.
Then learn to type, and use all lower-case. The fact you can't type your password is not my problem. Case insensitive passwords are (thankfully) a thing of the past. Get used to it. - HarleyQuinn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4#14 should be #1. There is no reason a web site should not support open standards in the browser department.
- Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Some good points, some not so good.
"5. Sites without Digg, del.icio.us, and Fark bookmarks"
Honestly, any business that takes stock in supporting these "bookmarks" is in for some trouble. Sure, they might be sources of a lot of traffic and exposure to the website, but high traffic does not necessarily yield high returns on profit, especially from jaded and hyper-critical communities like Digg. If anything, the business might end up getting more negative press then positive feedback through sites like Digg.
"7. Lack of feeds and email lists" I will say this, be VERY careful about the type of email you send to customers, even those that truly opted in on the email list (and avoid the accidental and double negative opt-ins, like people having to place a check mark NOT to recieve emails). Nothing will cause users to opt-out of a mailing list more quickly, or even mark you as spam, then sendings dozens of useless TIDBIT emails to your customers. If you have a major product or service announcement send ONE email describing it fully. DON'T send dozens of emails a week for every little thing your company does or every little update your product or service goes through. If your customers are "fans" they will frequent your website without constantly being hounded by emails. If you want to keep your customers fans, limit email contact period. If you need to post tidbit junk, leave it in an RSS Feed, or save it for a monthly newsletter rather on a daily or weekly basis. And please, if you change your service agreements more then once a year, seriously, your doing something wrong.
"12 Unreadable confirmation codes" If digg wasn't so fun to post on, then I would have b*tched about this long ago, but I get so frustrated with the ambiguous "Captha" letters. Particularily X, U, f, t, j, m, etc. With a system of various character sizes, an X and an x are easily confused. Also, a lot of the serifs on many characters get lost with the superfluous background marks. The guys behind Digg really need to follow this bit of advice. - DerProfi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is a very timely post, because I recently saw what I consider an EXCELLENT way to hinder your online business. Just send an email like this to potential customers in the armed forces:
From: contact@discount-mats.com [mailto: contact@discount-mats.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: Feedback: from discount-mats.com
SGT Hess,
We do not ship to APO addresses, and even if we did, we would NEVER ship to Iraq. If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.
Bargain Suppliers
Discount-Mats.com - Barman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You'd be surprised, with all the start-ups and what not out there. I think these are great tips for any online business just because they are the basic things that piss people off and turn them away from your website.
- Room214, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's the little things that count and Guy gives a good comprehensive starting point with the 14 tips. Now the "14 reasons why people don't use common sense on the Internet" would be a great article. I'll provide point 1.
1. No accountable person in the lead. Too many cooks in the kitchen, and nothing gets served. There needs to be an integration overlord of IT, Sales, Marketing, PR, Branding, Social Media for any online effort. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"What would your reaction be."
Is this perhaps supposed to be a... question? If so, why the hell didn't you use a question mark? - lordslumber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Some of these are good, and I agree with them. But quite a few of them seem to be either pet peeves or preferences that have no data to back them up whats-so-ever. It seems he is talking about power users, rather than the more common stupid internet users. What is Random Internet User gonna do with Digg buttons if they've never even seen Digg?
- adougherty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They're actually good tips for the non-technical, imo. Reading through them, I kepts hearing the voices of past employers and marketing types that thought those were each good ideas!
"Yes, we should have everyone register on our homepage, so we know who is using our site, and how to market to them better"
"Long URLs look more professional!"
"I would like to track everything about a user on our site, with out using a database, so we need longer URLs to support that massive amount of information"
"When ever someone comes to our site, I want them to start at the homepage, no matter what! The homepage is part of the user experience, and is how we can best guide them to the products they want."
"It's a security vulnerability for people to know the URL of a page, so don't let them see it"
"It's bad customer service to not let people contact the company, but it's bad customer service to not respond to said contacts, so we have to provide a way for people to contact us, but not make it too easy"
"If we provide a real email address, we'll get spammed"
"I want to know everything about a customer when they contact us, so we can't just have them send us an email. Make them fill out a form with all the information we need. Then, we can automatically redirect them to a page answering their question with out contacting us. Everyone is happy!"
"All we have to do is put a notice on the page saying it's built for Internet Explorer, then that 1% who don't use it, can just open another browser to come to our page. It's that easy!"
-----------------
Most of these thoughts are the result of someone who doesn't understand how people use the web, or why people use the web. Typically, they are very arrogant and believe that people LOVE their site and products, and would do anything to the company asks. - Psicosis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If I've got an online store I don't think digg buttons will push the merchandise out any quicker, it will just fill the page with more crud.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Agreed. He's right, usernames should be case insensitive. Lord knows I wouldn't want some troll to start posting as merReborn, or MERreborn, or any of the many other permutations of my name that'd be possible if usernames were case sensitive.
But case-insensitive passwords narrow the password space by nearly 50%. Meaning your password is twice as easy to guess. If you want a "case-insensitive" password, use lower case, and learn how to figure out whether you have capslock on or not.
Another point of contention:
"Unreadable confirmation codes... Maybe this only affects old people like me, but it seems that all one merely has to prove is that you’re not a robot so a little bit of fuzziness should be good enough. For example, if the code is “ghj1lK” and someone who enters “ghj11K” is close enough."
I agree, captchas suck. However, OCR software can now defeat many simple captchas with 50%+ accuracy. That means for any big site, it's terribly unreadible captcha, or nothing (nothing may be a better option).
Realize that for, say, yahoo, the stakes are high. People use bots to create millions of yahoo accounts annually, to store terrabytes upon terrabytes of data -- costing yahoo big bucks. And then there's spam -- let too many spammers through, and people won't bother with your site.
Long story short, the options are: (1) hard to read captcha (2) something else entirely. "Easier captcha" isn't an option at all. And no one's really come up with a good alternative to captcha.
The rest of the article's great though. - vertinox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@"1. No accountable person in the lead."
Eh. I don't think that is 100% needed but its helps. The thing is that even if you have the next Steve Jobs running your company won't make your website not suck if it is IE only or forces user registration.
Of course an intelligent helmsman would specifically tell them not to use such practices on their website. *coughs* - h0dg3s, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@aguilr
Because that would make it easier for people that know what they're doing to start screwing with logins.
Different symbols mean different things in different programing languages. That and some people don't know how to code properly. - resplence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1#16: Annoying sideways gradients in the text's background.
- iluvhatemail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Friction-full commenting"
Somehow every idiot on the web gets to post crappy comments on gizmodo.com, but I can't. Not that i compare to those idiots on the entertaining level but occasionally i have something intelligent to say or a question to ask. I'm pretty fed up with the never ending iphone coverage anyways. - aguilr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Quite the contrary to this guy's rant, I HATE sites that restrict me from using any character I want in a password. It's MY password, you ask me to confirm it; if I forget it, that's my problem. Take Cingular, why the hell would you limit my choice of characters for a password; I do really want to make that password as hard as possible for others to guess!
- kjm16, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I personally believe that it's easier to support Safari than IE.
- Edmundtai, on 08/28/2008, -0/+0Wow, thanks dude for sharing these...make me skip some road blocks, but some is no right and wrong answer deoend on how people apply it. Anyway, I would like to recommend you to do some more research to improve your topics. You can get loads free informational products on online business topic free for download at www.elibrarybank.com Happy researching.
- devoss, on 10/12/2007, -1/+115. Running scripts from 10 different websites.
- 3DProf4online, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What are your opinions about implementing 3D into online store web sites? Could 3D improve product presentation in an online-store and lead it to success?
3DProf4online
from TouchBubble.com - jshen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So....... is that a no to pulling out of Iraq? :)
- ChrisAlbon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I'd be registering iTop14WaysToHinderYourBusinessOnline.com
- NatashaMiller, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I'm a fan of Guy's blog. I'm not even in the tech industry (I'm in music), but his posts always ROCK! This one is genius of course!
Natasha
natashamillerweb,.com - meshman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4"There’s no logic that I can think of why a company would not want its fans to bookmark its pages."
Not every business chooses to advertise through Digg and Fark dumbass. Some deliberately avoid it. I'd explain the logic but you wouldn't get it.
"How about the patent-pending, curve-jumping, VC-funded Web 2.0 company that wants to you to share content but requires you to re-type the email addresses of your friends?"
Email them and tell them there's no such thing as Web 2.0 and deal with someone that knows how the Internet works.
"A visual confirmation graphic system is a good thing, but many are too difficult to read."
Heh. Yeah, we know. - h0dg3s, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Not only am I not going to your website, I dugg you down. You can't claim your forum is the next best thing...look how desperate you are for attention, spamming it.
- tom2275, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Here's another (e-business hinderance) I'm living through right now. I went to www.autopartswarehouse.com and bought a replacement tail-light for my '99 mustang. They sent me the a tail-light for an 04 Honda Civic. This in and of itself isn't a big deal. However, instead of allowing me to return the part they sent and send me the correct part, they will only allow me to return it and accept a refund (which they say will take 4 to 6 weeks). Why a business would prefer to negate a sale instead of correct an error is beyond me, but the fact that it is going to take so long to return my money has me pissed.
- h0dg3s, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Reported as blogspam.
- m0laria, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I will now spend the next 15 years of my life attempting to attain this list in its most purest form.
- jorazzle, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0A company I know is working on an eBay competitor for marketers and consumers. It's iSocket.com, but I don't think it's launching for a few months.
- rudy23, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4Question for Diggers.
Lets say Steve Jobs came up with this list instead of Guy Kawasaki..
What would your reaction be.
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