Many organizations have put together web sites that may generate a lot of hits, but do not really help site visitors or serve the business goals supposedly driving the web site. The invisibility of the customer experience contributes to why companies unwittingly allow this to happen.

Forrester Research estimates that many e-commerce web sites lose up to half of their sales from potential customers abandoning their search for merchandise. Difficulties using a web design will prevent up to 40% of a site's visitors from returning. A study by UIE, located near Boston, found that people looking for information on corporate web sites fail to find what they want 62% of the time. Web sites in the study included obviously well funded and well-advertised sites from companies such as Disney and Fidelity.

All of the above points to a huge waste of time and money for organizations that have built most web sites. So, why have a web site if people can't use it?

The software industry as a whole is quite young, no more than 50 years old. The web and e-commerce business is even younger, taking on importance only in the last several years. Amidst all of the Internet fervor, many organizations have rushed to develop their web sites. Typically, the site designs have been driven completely by technologists or by graphic designers. Their measures of success have come from "hit" reports, or detailed logs about site visitors and their activity. Unfortunately, this process for development and feedback comes far short of serving customers well or effectively meeting the goals of an organization.

Consider the difference between how well an organization knows business is going for a "brick-and-mortar" store vs. business for a "virtual store." The difference profoundly favors the brick-and-mortar store. Why? Experienced retail managers can walk into a store and recognize the level of the customer service provided by employees, the attractiveness of the storefront and the sales floor, the effectiveness of the merchandising, and, most importantly, the quality of the total shopping experience for the customers. All this immediate feedback informs savvy managers if the store business is promising or troubling, and informs them what kind of changes are warranted.

In comparison, e-commerce business is an enigmatic black box to most organizations. After all, where is the storefront? The sales floor or the merchandising? The customer service? One answer is that they are all on the web site. An even better answer is that all of these critical business experiences are happening right now between prospective customers and their web browsers.

I pose the following question for anyone whose business depends on e-commerce. John Q. Public is shopping at his computer, and what do you really know about how well it is going? Can he find what he wants? Is he having problems trying to "check-out" and buy something? How satisfied will he be with the overall shopping experience, and will he ever come back?

Hit reports and other reports from a site's log files will only tell part of the story. As with most "black box" recorders, log files systems can give some precise bits and pieces of data, but it is very difficult to understand from them what is really going on. Nevertheless, many web site managers focus on their hit reports above all else. Undoubtedly, significant rises and falls in hits do provide a gross indication of a site's success. But hit reports cannot tell you why people leave a web site or if they plan on returning, and hit reports cannot help you identify what aspects of your "store" frustrate your customers and need to be changed.

Usability testing and other techniques focused on people actually using a web site provide the best and the most meaningful feedback on the customer experience. If you observe real people performing tasks relevant to the site's success, your understanding of your customers' experience will be far greater than what you had before. In the excellent article "Mazed and Confused" from CIO magazine, we find that Charles Schwab conducts three usability tests with their customers every week. The article states that "…as more and more newcomers get online, and the competition for their dollars increases, more e-commerce sites are making ease of use a differentiator." Mark Thompson, the executive vice president of Customer Experience at Schwab & Co., Inc., says that "… A year ago, it was a rush to put up applications and functionality. It's now a rush to be useful."

One other huge hurdle that adversely impacts a web site comes from a lack of understanding of this media. I have had a key member of management for the web site of a large company tell me that the site was not supposed to be "interactive." This manager happened to have years of success in other media, mostly print. When the decision-makers don't appreciate the vital relevance of concepts such as interactivity, site navigation, and web-worthy content, then the web site is likely to suffer.

If you have responsibility for an important web site, or have invested in a company depending on the success of a web site, find out if usability testing or paper prototyping has been done or is planned. If not, find out how the organization knows what is going on with your customers. Chances are, especially in the case of e-commerce, no one is "minding the store." Of course, a great many "dot.com" companies have been launched and have attracted a great deal of capital by meeting the challenge of implementing their sites as quickly as humanly possible. In the long run though, customers will determine what businesses succeed and what businesses fail. Statistics from web site logs will help you gauge the rise and fall of overall customer traffic, but they tell little or nothing about your customers' experience.

Why have a web site that people can't use? Because the people running the site don't really know what is happening with their customers. In the Internet age, the customer experience has been left invisible. Of course, as with everything else involved with the Internet, this won't last for very long. And, of course, not all the web sites we see today will last either.

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