February 2003

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There is an emerging collection of agreen-upon basic rules of e-commerce system design that if adhered to will yield the ETDBW results you need for sustained success and if strayed from will ruin the visitor's experience and ensure they won't come back to your barrier-laden Web site. The rules are

• Be Useful: Shoppers typically don't care about the history of your founder so don't make that your opening page -- or even an obvious detour. They do care about finding a product that fits their needs quickly and easily. Give them easy access to prices, descriptions, and checkouts. Do not inundate them with pop-up windows, banner ads, and useless information.
  
  
• Don't Waste Their Time: Buyers shop online because it's advertised as being faster, cheaper and more convenient than going to a store or calling a vendor. Keep this in mind at all times while evaluating your plans to add, subtract, change, or modify your Web site. Give them one-click access to any page from any page through a universal navigator A ski equipment site that begins by asking for the customer's skiing proficiency level feels as if the customer's convenience and time are important considerations to your company.
  
  
• Make Everything Obvious: The best way to do this is to make every vital link and tool accessible on every page. That includes a search field, access to the shopping cart, a direct "jump to check-out" option, shopping categories, and customer service. If the buyer has to hunt and search for anything, the experience becomes a burden.
  
  
• Be Bandwidth-friendly: No matter how attractive your graphics, long downloads annoy shoppers. They are not there to be wowed by your art, they are there to shop.

Zona Research estimates that Web sites are losing $362 million/month, more than $4 billion annually, because of unacceptable download speeds. According to the report, the average Web buyer will wait about 8 seconds for a page to download

One way to sneak big graphics in without losing business is to have the rest of your content download first giving shoppers something to read while the graphics load. The HoneyBaked Ham Company (HoneyBaked.com) uses this tactic. Click on an item in the product list and you immediately see a delicious description of your item with phrases like "seven-pound spiral sliced ham smothered in our secret-spice glaze." About halfway through reading the description the picture pops into place, squelching any doubts you might have that spiral sliced ham is exactly what you want.

by Craig Wilson
Contributing Writer for USAToday

The fine folks who run the computer operations here at the newspaper sent out an email the other day informing me that I had to change the password I use to get into my laptop every morning. Increased security concerns and all.

Why anyone would want to get into my computer is beyond me, but my Mom warned me years ago that there are unstable people out there, and you can never be too careful. Evidently her message has reached our tech staff.

Not only did they tell me I had to change my password, they told me I couldn't change it to just anything I wanted, like something I might be able to remember. No, that would be too simple. My new password had to have at least eight characters and could not be a word found in the dictionary. We who make our living with words, are not allowed to use one to begin our day.

Anyway, I am convinced this is yet another not-too-subtle plot to eliminate those of us old enough to remember the comforting hum of an IBM Selectric. I have confessed before that my memory isn't what it used to be, that I can hardly remember my won name, and now the modern world is demanding that I remember a plethora of passwords.

Like my friend melinda, I can't even find the valuables I hid before I went on vacation last summer. Forget keeping them hidden from any would-be burglars -- they are now hidden from me, too. But I will stumble across them one of these days and be pleasantly surprised at how clever I was to ut them where I did.

Even on my darkest of mornings, I could remember MURPHY.

No longer.

there was a time not too long ago when the only number you neede to know was your phone number, and you didn't really need to know that because you rarely call yourself.

Now, millions of us can't get into our cars or homes without a number, a password, a code. One of my neighbors, who wisely shsared her security code number with us, calls frequently to ask what it is so she can go in and shyt off her system before the police come calling. We love her.

I stood at the ATM machine for 5 minutes the other day, waiting for my 4-digit password to float from my brain down to my fingertips so they could dance across the little keypad and give me money for the weekend. It finally surfaced, but not before the people behind me were convinced I'd either had a stroke right there in the line, or I was using someone else's card, punching numbers at random in hopes of hitting the jackpot.

It gets worse. Not long ago, I was on assignment in Utah and was calling back to the office on the 800 number. It's a number I have dialed for more than a decade. Could I remember it once I got beyond the 800? No. My mind went blank. I blamed it on the thin mountain air.

And the password to get into my 401(k) account? I don't have a clue, but I do know I tucked it away somewhere in my desk at home. It's just a matter of finding it.