What Happens When You Assume Prior Knowledge
I was called over to Stu’s desk earlier today when he asked me "Dude, have you heard of Ralio?" (which is a Java Coldfusion - CFML - interpreter or engine).
"Yes I have", I replied.
"Just imagine for a second you didn’t know about it and take a look at this", he said pointing to the Railo website open on his screen.
After a few seconds of skimming the homepage I had to admit that he was right, if I had no prior knowledge of Railo then I would not have gained any insight as to what Railo is from the homepage, worse still the information cannot be found under the About Railo section.
Sometimes things like this are very easy to slip through when creating a website (or other promotional material) for your new product/service/idea/whatever; as you and everyone involved already know what it is you’re trying to promote.
However it is always important to step back from whatever it is your doing (and I know I’ve been guilty of not always doing this in the past), whether it be a new site, product or even a new page on an existing site, and ask yourself if it carries enough information for users with no prior knowledge.
I quite like the Railo homepage, although it’s a tad cluttered for me, so in this case the solution should be quite simple; there’s plenty of room either in the header or the flash banner to add a tag line explaining what Railo is.
Comments
There have been 3 comments so far, join the discussion.
1. Peter Boughton - 24th Feb 2007 - 7:49 pm
On one hand, you’ve made a fair point. (And one worth pointing out to the Railo guys so they can rectify it.)
On the other hand… assuming you randomly found it without specifically being referred to it as a CFML engine, and assuming you haven’t heard of Fusebox.Model-Glue/Mark Drew, (both of which I’d consider unlikely), but looking at it and thinking “WTF is this?” my natural reaction is to click the big FAQ link. Followed by General, and the first item is “What is Railo?” that explains exactly what it is.
So, considering that most people visiting the page will have been referred to it in some fashion, I don’t think it’s that bad.
Although what does often bug me is none of the pages having titles. Which I’m going to go moan about on the mailing list now. ;)
2. Dave - 24th Feb 2007 - 7:58 pm
Peter:
I made a similar comment to Stu when he first pointed it out, i.e. “well you’d assume people end up at the site by knowing what it is about, you’re not going to randomly fall on it”. To which his reply was, “Well I did, I just clicked through from the Scotch on the Rocks site and had no idea what it was…”
So that was the basis for my post, and the fact that the homepage doesn’t tell you what it is about is a big issue in my opinion, users just love to click the back button.
3. Peter Boughton - 24th Feb 2007 - 8:10 pm
Ah yeah, just following a logo in a list of sponsors doesn’t give much context.
Though I would still hope developers are a little more exploritary than regular users, and would poke around a bit rather than just hitting back.
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