I have long pointed to the website of a local junk hauling company, Happy Hauler, as the epitome of effective web design.
Their clients call to book junk pickups. So, at the top of their homepage they’ve put great big phone numbers for booking appointments. Their left-hand navigation, consistent throughout the site, has prominent links to:
- a list of their services
- pricing info
- an FAQ
This is not rocket science. Or is it?
Today I went to the website of a large local business to make an appointment for services and found the following:
A phone number at the bottom of the homepage in what is probably 6-point type. I couldn’t read it clearly, so I clicked on the “us” in the nav bar. Hey, it was the closest thing to “Contact Us” that I could find. But the “Us” page turned out to be the company’s mission statement. The first element in the navigation on this page (a whole other design, in a different part of the page) was “the founder.”
Showing customers their gushy, eye-glazing mission statement and telling us about the person who founded the company (whom I have never heard of, and who has no direct customer contact) was obviously more important to them than giving me a readable phone number so I could (gasp) book an appointment.
I can’t believe that in this day and age people are still designing websites like this. I called a rival business.