Yesterday, for very differing reasons, I visited two UK online retail sites - one selling goth clothing and t-shirts (www.attitude.uk.com) and one who specialises in clothes for the, let’s say, bigger man (www.bigteeshirt.co.uk).

Here’s the thing - I had my credit card out, I was ready to spend the money. In fact, despite the resistance one of these sites put up, I did spend the money.

But I have no doubt that the owners of Attitude Clothing are wondering why, despite their niche market and almost captive audience, they don’t convert that well.

A quick comparison reveals the basic difference between the two sites:

Bigteeshirt.co.uk, despite having a very basic design, does so much right.

Nice big, clear images of the products; a size chart on every page, a very clear call to action (Order Before 2pm and You’ll Receive It The Next Day) - there’s everything you need to know on every product page.

Plus, they let you browse the site in logical ways : you can view by styles of clothing (ie: t-shirts, shirts, belts, etc.); by size (and here they have sizes in inches or xl, xxl, etc - it’s your choice). You can choose new products, sale products, 100% cotton products - and you can browse through these and see what takes your fancy.

This is ecommerce made simple and done right. They might not be a huge brand name site, but it does exactly what it says on the tin and for that, BigTeeShirt.co.uk should be commended.

Compare this with www.attitude.uk.com - it’s a prettier site, for sure, but it does everything wrong.

Here’s just a couple of examples :

1) Well, they use dhtml menus and javascript drop downs as part of their navigation. However, all I did was click the ‘go’ button next to the ‘by product’ drop down list. What I was expecting to see was a range of product types to choose from or a maybe a landing page pushing me towards particular items.

I didn’t expect this, however,

And that wasn’t all. When I wanted to browse the sale section (again not choosing any particular subcategory - I just wanted to see what was on offer), I got taken back to the homepage.

In fact, all of those graphical links on the left hand side of each page will take you back to the homepage unless you select a sub-category from the dhtml pop up menus.

Ugh. Does nobody test these things to see how user-friendly they are?

Sometimes people just like to browse through a website - without any particular rhyme or reason or idea in mind. Attitude.uk.com makes this impossible and frankly, the whole buying experience was extremely frustrating.

There is a lesson here: converting your customers isn’t really about having a pretty website. It’s about providing them with control over their experience on your website and allowing them to use your website in ways that suit them as individuals.

If your website does that right - like Big Tee Shirt.co.uk , then you will reap the rewards. If you fail to do it, as Attitude Clothing clearly do, don’t be surprised if that niche market gravitates towards a competitor who can provide a satisfying online purchasing experience.

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The last twelve months seem to have been the time that so-called ‘usability experts’ have risen like the mythical Kraken to tell us lesser mortals how to make our websites, um, usable.

Part evangelists, part snake oil salesmen; these so-called ‘expert consultants’ preach the gospel according to Nielsen until they are blue in the face and yet…..well, they have no product. No real value to add to your business.

Nevertheless, it seems that every third person I meet these days claims to be a ‘web usability expert’ of some kind.

Let me be very clear. I’m not saying that ‘usability’ is not an important factor in web design and in converting visitors into leads. It is.

But it’s such a simple thing. There really isn’t that much to understand. If you’re visitor knows where (s)he is on your website, recognises what is a link and understands what to do or to click to find the information he or she is looking for; then that’s it. That’s usability.

It doesn’t take an overpaid ‘consultant’ to tell you that if you make your links blue and underlined, then your visitors will recognise them as a link, does it?

It doesn’t require outside expertise to tell you that if you want to make your website better, watch a few people using it and then make changes to make it easier to use.

The whole notion of ‘web usability consultants’ angers me. Probably more than it should, admittedly, but then again I’ve never claimed to be Mr Calm and Considered.

Part of the problem is that many usability ‘gurus’ are evangelicals, whose interest is not so much in the conversion process of the website but in advancing an agenda that would keep all websites looking like they were designed (badly) in 1996.

Personal opinion and subjectivity of this kind has no place in 21st online business processes.

As I’ve already stated, usability in it’s most worthwhile form is so simple, there is no need for any so-called consultants to assist with it. Furthermore, despite what usability evangelicals might tell, it is - to use So-Cal teen speak - not all that.

If it was, MySpace.com would never have been successful and no one would ever wear a thong.

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It’s probably not just me who thinks this, but Google’s knowledge of and access to the inner workings of people’s online businesses is becoming very disturbing.

And yet people are still letting Google get away with it. The introduction of Google Checkout (which has just launched here in the UK) is just another example of this.

The combination of free transaction processing until 2008 with a £10 off orders over £30 offer for customers using Google Checkout is, on the face of it, an extremely attractive proposition.

However, the reality of the situation is that you are giving Google access to information it shouldn’t really have. They will know your best selling products, your average basket size and more.

God forbid that you should be using Google Analytics or the Google Adwords conversion tracking tool as well. In that case, you might as well hand the management of your entire business over to Google as they will know the conversion ratio of all your keywords, they will know the most common paths of your visitors, they will know where your conversion process breaks down. They will, know, quite literally, everything that your marketing department knows.

And you can bet that they will be using this information at some point in the future. Otherwise, why give away free tools like Google Analytics in the first place?

You can be certain that minimum bid prices for certain keywords will start to increase as the oh-so-benevolent Google squeeze the margins of their advertisers. And that, of course, is just a starting point.

Repeat after me : ‘I will stop handing Google extremely valuable and private business information for FREE’. OK, got that.

Right? Now, stop doing it. You will only damage your own business in the long run.

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