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User Experience – A Real Conundrum
(Article Contributed By Marie, of Sex Story Text - Posted on August 02nd, 2010)
Conundrum n. anything that puzzles ... just in case you didn't know what a conundrum was.
User experience is slowly becoming a real trending topic over in mainstream. What people are talking about over there when they talk about user experience is the need to make a website as user-friendly as possible.
Of course when you stop to think about it making a website as user-friendly as possible is just plain common sense and it's something we shouldn't be talking about. It should be so basic as to be embedded in our genes because it really is one of the very basic basics of web design.
Whether we want to entertain ... inform ... or market something ... via a website we need to do it in such a way that the people who visit that site get the best possible experience.
If we want to entertain then we want our site visitors to have fun; if we want to inform then we want people to remember what we've told them and if we want to sell them something then we want them to buy what we're selling. And no matter what our goal might be we can achieve that goal by giving our site visitors a good user experience.
Everything should be clearly set out so that they can find what they want. The site should be optimized so that it downloads quickly and works perfectly on every browser. The images should be clear and appealing and not blurry, small and so fuzzy that they actually detract from the site rather than adding to it.
Now that sounds wonderful in theory and it's not that hard to achieve in practice but is that really what we want for a site that's marketing something here in adult?
Obviously that's going to depend on what you're marketing and if the product is something like a sex toy for example then ensuring that people who visit your site get a great user experience from that site is important. But what if you're selling a membership to a hardcore paysite?
We've managed to dig a very big hole for ourselves in this industry when it comes to marketing our product. We've become totally reliant on offering too much in the way of freebies as bait to get people to look at our marketing message and now we give so much away that many visitors to our sites see no need to pay for what we want them to buy.
Of course that's been a problem for years and there have been some over the years who suggested that we might improve our sales if we reduced our user experience ... and you could count me among those who suggested that approach.
The idea has been that if you make your images on your free sites and galleries small ... make them a little fuzzy ... don't show too much hardcore and definitely don't show the money shots (the cum shots ... the facials ... the creampies) ... and then visitors to your sites and galleries won't waste time on your site but will be more likely to head straight over to your sponsor.
The idea has also been that you make your advertising ... your marketing ... stand out at the expense of your 'enter' button or the links to your galleries. If site visitors can't see those important links because all the marketing captures their attention then they're going to be more likely to head over to your sponsor's site and you'll make a sale.
Basically that all boils down to giving the visitors to your site the worst possible user experience and they'll rush to leave via the links to your sponsor.
It's a nice idea but does it really work? Would you be more likely to click on a sponsor's link when you land on a site that is hard to navigate and really doesn't show you what you want to see? Or would you be more likely to hit the 'back' button and go back to the link list or TGP where you're sure to find a site that does deliver a better user experience?
Of course you're going to want to get rid of all those freeloaders that this industry attracts just as quick as you can but what's going to happen to your sales if you're also getting rid of those site visitors who might be prepared to buy what you're selling?
And just how much is too much user experience for an adult site? Do we minimize the advertising and maximize the images? Do we give our site visitors every money shot we possibly can in the hope that will encourage them to go over to our sponsor to pay for more of what we've already given them for free?
As you can see ... user experience is always going to be a real conundrum for those of us who want to sell adult products online. While it may be possible in mainstream to never have too much user experience here in adult our sales are going to suffer if we have too much ... and they're also going to suffer if we have to little.
I wonder what Goldilocks would describe as "just right" for an adult site?
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