"Reaction [beta]"
Why does marketing hate usability? 12 Mar 2007
"I hate to admit this because it feels selfish and I don't want to appear like a usability activist. But. It secretly bothers me when I see conferences or seminars on website marketing that don't offer a session on user centered design. I always wonder why this is. Is usability that scary?
"Time and time again I will witness or be part of a conversation where a site owner will ask, 'What is wrong with my website? It's not selling/working/ranking/etc.' You can insert the word, but it always means a failure to perform. Since the target market is nearly always human, it seems strange that advice starts and stops at the source code or methodology for improving optimization."
So why are marketers ignoring usability? The ungenerous answer would be that marketers only care about getting people to a site - and not about people's experience with the site thereafter. The generous answer would be that marketers don't know much about usability and that we need to educate them. We're guessing the latter interpretation is closest to the truth.
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3 comments so far
Mac 12 Mar 2007 11:15 AM
I think you had it right first time. Many online marketers measure there success in terms of pages views (or worse, hits) and SERP rankings, so why would they care about whether a site is actually any good or not?
Mike T 12 Mar 2007 03:09 PM
Marketing loves usability, but usability never returns marketing's calls :-(
Schnute 4 Apr 2007 11:56 PM
Business need marketing to reach goals, ans usability is the clever way to go so far...
an evidence of that; have a look http://happyuser.xperienceconsulting.com/