Corporate websites can be the most non-interactive places on the internet. They consist of mostly static pages, and the way designers make them interesting for readers is by considering the choice of colors, layout (how much text where), graphics, Flash and the like.
Now, take a look at this, taken from a corporate website.
Each page (other than the home page), has this little form (6 fields, 3 mandatory) tucked away on the right. So imagine users browsing the site and reading about the company - the minute they see something interesting, they can request to be contacted right away.
Without navigating away.
Without losing context.
Without having to search for a "Contact Us" page.
Without it being in your face.
Eliminating these hassles would also result in more people actually filling up the form. Which means more leads. More sales. More revenue.
When was the last time you looked at your corporate website to provide a better User Experience? Mea Culpa. Off I go now.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
User Experience on a Corporate Website
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7 comments:
Nice
Sowmya, you think so? Do you think when people like content and offerings, they shy away from contacting because the contact us is three clicks away?
Does this not rather look like the "COntact us, we are waiting for your call" ads you see if you stay way past mid night on certain channels?
@sunil If a potential client wants to ask you something he will do it anyways. Be it two clicks or by sending an email or making a phone call. Its like you still using vista with all that bad UX you reported about. You still use it coz there are things which you still get done using vista.
Its about how you can improve the UX by making it a little more interactive by giving the forms without losing context and without navigating away.
If your potential client read about something on your site and if he has a query he can quickly use the side bar form to do it (He might want to quote something from the site's write up)rather than finding out the contact link and then navigating to that page to figure out how to contact you. He will do it anyways... but the sidebar form just makes his life simpler.
@Sunil,
As Umesh said, it makes it easier for an intent (especially a semi-intent) to materialize into an action.
Also look at the form: Small enough fonts, the colors blend in, the form doesn't pop at you suddenly, no bold fields. If you look at it within the context of the entire page, you'll see that the form isn't being obtuse.
Another simple but powerful information this enables: It can tell you exactly what(page) the user was looking at - without the user needing to provide any information.
This is actually very interesting. I have nevere quite seen anything like this before.
The form is very well made and not obtrusive to the UX.
I received this comment in an email from Zubin Tavaria (he handles Media Relations for Aztecsoft. Posted here with his permission
Thanks! We appreciate the time and effort you took to make that blog post.
While our forms are not perfect, we appreciate and are grateful for all compliments :-)
Regards,
Zubin
Nice. But wondering if it can be improved further- Why ask for 3 mandatory fields when only one (email) is enough to start communication. As a user- I always dislike it when i am asked for unnecessary info
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