Hmmm... now, this gets my goat a little. Amazon has sales volumes, but it doesn't have profit beyond one quarter. All the bloody usability in the world hasn't prevented the losses due to bad (IMHO) business strategy. So where's the "success"? Sales without (eventual) profits are meaningless. If I sold widgets for $10, I could probably double sales by cutting the price to $3. Would that make it a successful business? Do you think that without its excellent logistics network, Amazon could have the sales it does? What's the point in having an extremely usable site if you can't ship to your customers in time?

Usability *is* important, but it isn't everything. (And when I read articles like this, it makes my blood boil. Such ignorance cannot be forgiven.)

Don't believe me? Let me ask you this: in 1984, which had the superior interface - the command line DOS-based PC or the Apple Macintosh? Apple had a good GUI nearly two decades ago. Yet, did it storm the market? No! People actually stuck to a crappy command prompt till Microsoft Windows 3.0 went mainstream - about 9 years later. Did usability help Apple recover from its stupid business decision to retain all control over its hardware? Why on earth would customers prefer the pathetic usability of "C:\>" to the slick GUI of the Mac?

Patricia Seybold (of the Customers.com book fame) actually wrote that companies should spend more on customer-centred practices and *less* on marketing/ advertising. I'm all for customer-centric design, etc., but if you honestly think that marketing isn't essential to the success of a product, you need a nut tightened in your head.

This is a space for comments, so I won't write an article here. It just bugs me that some people refuse to acknowledge ALL the factors that make a product and company successful.

Posted by: MadMan on May 29, 2002 12:08 PM

 

The reason Milo Minderbender can sell his eggs at below his cost is because he deals in volume! I think that's pretty much the Bezos model: lose money like crazy, early, to achieve critical mass. But as you properly point out, a profitable quarter was a very long time in coming.

I think that we could fairly describe usability as necessary for success, but not sufficient. I just spent considerable time at hotels.com before I realized that they were offering me hotels with insufficient numbers of beds (which couldn't be determined until 2-3 clicks deeper into the process, one hotel at a time). Orbitz wasn't better - - offering hotels where rooms either weren't available or the data wasn't in their system. (I eventually cut bait and went directly to calling a hotel chain on the phone.) In each case, the site was unuseable because it wanted me to sift through the VOLUMES of irrelevant information.

Hotels (and books/whatever in the case of Amazon) should be areas where the internet excels, not fails miserably. Profitability and useability are both -necessary-, but neither is sufficient for success.

Posted by: Frank on May 29, 2002 12:50 PM

 

MadMan, as usual, I think you're right.. Unfortunately though I don't think the majority of people are going to realize the importance of usability/marketing/sales/programming/support etc. as a combined "force" any time soon...

As far as I've seen, people tend to think that whatever it is they're doing is the answer to solving all the problems in the world. Sales and Marketing people dont really care about usability, but then again, we usability professionals dont always point out how marketing will fit into the approach we suggest. Marketing thinks that if they do their job good enough nobody's going to think twice about the usability of whatever they're marketing. Usability people tend to think that if the product is usable enough it will market itself. hmm..

I would love for somebody to come out and tell me that I'm just observing the wrong instances and that usually it's not like that at all... or that there is absolutely nothing wrong with "my job will end world hunger" approach... anyone?
my two cents.

Posted by: Berna on May 29, 2002 01:29 PM

 

Berna, I tend to agree with you. The two practices of usability and marketing are more effective when the other component is involved. Good usability doesn't mean squat if the marketing is wrong (or missing), and slick marketing might get initial users, but won't save a poorly designed product in the end.

What I want to know is whether others think the two are separate practices or not. I tend to think they are, aside from influence on branding, but I have been at companies where Marketing had a stranglehold on everything that a customer saw, resulting in a rigid, gridlocked design. Has blending the two ever worked for anyone?

Posted by: Lydia on May 29, 2002 02:52 PM

 

Lydia, I have also worked in such a company. I do believe that Marketing and Usability are seperate practices, but however, I don't agree that one should have control over the other, or that they shouldnt be able to work together.

It would be VERY interesting to know if anybody can provide us with a case of blending the two. Who knows, maybe we're being idealistic, maybe it's been tried and the company ended up with the loss of both departments who, at the end, just killed eachother. heh!

John, do you have any comments on this issue?

Posted by: Berna on May 29, 2002 03:29 PM

 

Berna, my experience has been different from yours, when you wrote, "Usability people tend to think that if the product is usable enough it will market itself." The usability people I dealt with were frequently asking questions regarding genuine customer needs - - not necessarily with respect whether a web site should even exist or not, but more along the lines of what to offer & emphasize on a web site, with an interest in minimizing extraneous features.

Posted by: Frank on May 29, 2002 04:25 PM

 

Madman
What bugs you about the Cooper.com article "Three Traps"? Ok, it's not a very broad perspective-- the author cites only 3 pitfalls. Seemed reasonable to me, though.
If anything, that article seems to support your argument... maybe I've misunderstood.

// G

Posted by: G. Kart Mozart on May 29, 2002 06:51 PM

 

What you stated is partly my point. If all marketing people thought of marketing as only "asking questions regarding genuine customer needs" and also that what to offer on the site could be answered by customer questions, I dont think that marketing and usability would have any problems getting along... In most marketing departments I've seen, we actually had to convince them that asking customers what they want would be a good practice, rather then telling customers what they want.

Posted by: Berna on May 30, 2002 09:47 AM

 

Providing "what the customer needs" is the old definition of marketing. Sometimes, customers are not even aware of what they need. How many people asked for a product like the Jeep, you think?

May I recommend a reading of Marketing Warfare?

Posted by: MadMan on May 30, 2002 01:03 PM