A couple weeks ago, I was watching an episode of Monk where the obsessive-compulsive detective was introduced to the wonderful world of computers and the internet. I LOL-ed as he won a Solitaire game for the first time and watched the cards go dancing across the screen. For many of us, that’s terribly old school.
But it was endearing because it brings back good memories. I was lucky enough to have a computer programmer for a father. As such, I was on the internet making friends I’d never met in person, sending emails and posting on message boards while the cool kids were doing whatever cool kids do in high school.
When I got to college, the obsession continued and I majored in Electronic Publishing which required entire courses based on the “World Wide Web.” If I can have a little room to brag, I received the highest grade for my web site my senior year, which I called “Natscape.” I got the grade because I stuck to the usability principles provided by the Professor. Meanwhile, other students had hippie rainbows with, well, I don’t know what their content was – the page was too busy.
It’s tempting to think that we’ve moved beyond all this. Surely most people are internet-savvy these days. But are they really?
When I worked in politics, one of my stints was at an organization advocating for senior citizens. I learned that they were the fastest growing demographics for internet usage. It was key that we designed our web site around that factor. It had to be easy to navigate. The text needed to be big enough. Would they know to click on the images on the side?
Just last night, my mother-in-law (who’s nowhere close to becoming a senior citizen) mentioned that Gmail was too confusing. My husband and I discussed whether or not Gmail was a good email tool for the casual internet user. I feel it’s more intuitive for the internet-savvy, whereas my Autocad software developer hubby feels that anybody who’s ever clicked a mouse should be able to Gmail.
With 70 million about to enter retirement in the coming years, how’s the usability on our clients’ sites? People who have spent their life teaching in a classroom, administering IVs to patients, and engaging in entrepreneurship before the dot com era will have more time to surf. But are they curious enough to start a blog and add widgets?
We should never forget what it was like to start out with computers and the internet. As SEOs we have to keep that in mind for our clients. Their ROI depends on it.
