What a cool new web feature – but will visitors actually use it?

Going back to my last post, the Realtor who called me had a vision for his current website. He had a feature that allowed clients to become members of his website and save homes they were interested in. While he didn’t go into specifics, his words were that this feature was a mess.

Anyway, he was interested in a template design for a blog. Each member of his site would have their own blog through, say, Blogger.com, so he could keep in continual communication with them.

What Do Visitors Want?

When evaluating any new feature for your website, the first thing you must ask yourself is will your visitors actually use it? It may seem like the greatest thing in the world to you, but you ultimately aren’t the one using your website to find out more information. If your visitors aren’t going to use the tool, you’re wasting your money. And in today’s internet age, unless you provide something of great value, your visitors won’t bother.

How many websites do you visit where you were asked to provide some type of information to get something in return – free email, a free guide, access to the members area, a free trial, etc? How often do you type in deliberately wrong information because you didn’t want to give out that information? Now, which sites are you more inclined to enter the correct information, and why? Think about it for a minute.

The sites where you enter the correct information usually ask a few targeted questions that seem fairly reasonable for what they will give you in return. For a newsletter, that may be simply your name and email address, for instance. The site earned your trust so you gave out your information in hopes of being contacted every month with new, relevant and valuable content.

Will Users Actually Use Your Cool Tool?

In the case above, while it seems interesting that you might provide free blogs to members of your site, what are the odds that they will actually use the tool? You, the Realtor, are the only one reading the blog, and they might not know you very well, so why would they blog to you? Blogging tends to be a more social tool – people write whatever’s on their mind, whether that be venting about something that happened at work to an article they read in the newspaper to creative writings they’ve just recently composed.

Of course, all users are different, and maybe you do have a targeted segment that is very much into blogging (a recent Pew Internet & American Life survey suggests that somewhere between 2-7% of the population maintains online weblogs). However, in order to know that, you need to know what your clients want. The best way to find that out is to ask them. Ask them questions about how comfortable they’d feel sharing information through a blog vs. say email, a forum, or by phone. Ask them if they’ve ever used a blog. If they haven’t, there will be a learning curve while learn how to use the feature – and odds are, most probably won’t take the time to learn. Ask them how familiar they are with the web, what type of connection they have, and if they use it at home or at work. A bit of initial customer research goes a long way to understanding your clients’ needs.

Finally, if you were to implement something similar to the feature described above, it would take some custom programming to get it to work right with your existing site. Cool new features almost always cost money, particularly if you want them well integrated with the rest of your site. If you’re not willing to pay what it takes to do it right, you’re better off not doing it.

User Friendly Design is Better Than “Cool” Features

One other thing, adding a cool new feature will not make up for a website that is not easy to use. If visitors have difficulties finding the content they are looking for, can’t figure out where they are on your site or how to get back to where they were, or your site just doesn’t work properly, they’ll leave. They’ll find a competitor who has an easier site to use.

Having a website is not enough. Your website must be user friendly – can your parents, grandparents, and computer illiterate relatives find their way around your site? If they get frustrated, chances are, your visitors will as well. And frustrated visitors don’t stick around very long.

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