You have to assume that when a Fortune 500 company like Grainger makes a big deal about changing a font color on their website, there is a very good reason behind it. This seemingly insignificant change can probably represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra sales.

Photo Credits: Darwin Bell

The best products are those that are intuitive and easy to use (what Guy Kawasaki calls “elegant”). By embracing web usability best practices and following a widely accepted convention (that links on websites are usually underlined and blue) Grainger is striving to make its site easier to navigate and increase its conversion rates.

Enhancing the user experience is not limited to the online world. For example, when early digital camera users wouldn’t know if they had successfully taken a picture, designers decided to incorporate a sound file that simulated a “click” after the user pressed the button.

Manufacturers of cars with continuous variable transmission (CVT) usually modify the vehicle’s software to simulate the jolt of changing gears, so drivers won’t complain that “there is something wrong” with their transmission.

Both the “click” sound and the gear changing jolt are things that users have come to expect when operating cameras and automobiles. Smart marketers will take things like that into account and build them into the design of their products.

Innovation and creativity are great, but they must not come at the expense of the way customers use your products.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Branding. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.