What the #!%$? Let Me Do What I Want!

I hope you got Thanksgiving out of your system because I’m done being thankful. [kicks Qualitygal]

Four days out of work meant four days surfing the Internet and getting frustrated while I tried to perform simple tasks. Want to hear about some of my troubles? Too bad. I’m going to tell you anyway. Welcome to my blog. (I swear I’m not this grumpy in real life… )

Gripe 1: Put Things Where I Expect Them

There was a Ustream chat Wednesday night starring Rae Hoffman and my SEO crush (and conference boyfriend) Michael Streko. Somehow, likely because I entered the room, the conversation briefly switched from affiliate marketing to the awesome that is over the knee socks. I love over the knee socks. I love them so much that the brief mention of socks led me on a $100+ over the knee sock buying expedition

Normally I do all my over the knee sock buying at Sock Dreams, but on Wednesday night I expanded my horizons and ended up on Anonymous Venice looking at their ninja knee high socks (glad I bought mine on Wednesday because now they’re sold out. Muahaha!).  Amused that I had found an awesome pair of ninja socks to rock at work, I wanted to browse around to see what other knee socks they offered. I went back to their home page to locate the Sock section.

Based on that left hand navigation, I didn’t have a clue where their socks would be (Shoes? Accessories?) so I figured I’d do a site search. Only, I couldn’t find the site search.

Go ahead, you try. I’ll wait.

You can’t find it, can you? You can’t find it because it’s below the fold and UNDER the navigation.

Who the heck puts their search function BELOW the fold and under everything else? People who don’t want you using it, that’s who.

Gripe 2: Anticipate What I Want To Do, Make It Stand Out

Earlier this month I moved into my swanky historic Troy, NY apartment.   Part of moving means I had to formally change my address and deal with the annoyance that is not getting my bills on time because they’re stuck somewhere between Troy, NY and Simi Valley, CA.  Late last week I received an email telling me that even though I hadn’t received my paper bill yet, my car insurance was due in 24 hours and that I should probably pay them before they send someone out to cut my brake lines.  It was too late to pay them via online banking (the payment would have arrived 5 days late) and my phone was out of reach to do it the old fashion way, so instead I took myself to the Unitrin Web site to see if they had an online bill pay.

Hmm.  Unfortunately for me, their main Web site doesn’t care if you’re a customer who wants to pay your bill. They only care about bringing in new customers. None of the options in their hard-to-navigate top navigation direct you anywhere useful.
Apparently, the car insurance side of Unitrin has its very own Web site at Unitrindirect.com. Hey, that’s cool, but it’d be nice if you’d offer me up a link to let me know that and direct me to the right site. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person to go to Unitrin.com and look around confused.

Okay, so now I’m on the right site. It’s time to pay this bill and go play in the snow. I head to the Payment Center, looked up my policy number and password, and am all set with my credit card in hand.

Um, where is it? Where’s the big PAY YOUR BILL button? All I see are lots of numbers and a lady asking me if I need help. Yes, I need help. Where is your big CLICK HERE TO PAY AND GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE button? I don’t want to call you. That’s why I’m on your Web site.

Oh wait…is that…oh yeah, there it is. All the way down there with two text links. Okay.

Unitrin gets points for putting it in red, but frankly, it’s too small. And it’s not how I’d expect it to look. Unitirn’s button should have looked like the save button for Thesis:

Now that is a Save button!

Gripe 3: Taking Away Features I Liked

One of my good nonSEO friends texted me excitedly over the long weekend to say that she had joined Twitter. Yey, I thought! I can pretend, if only for a little bit, that Twitter is something that “normal” people use and isn’t just for the social media crazy. I headed to Twitter to go and find her.

Um, fail. The option to search for people by name is now totally missing. I knew it had been down for awhile, but now it’s gone. WTH Twitter? How am I supposed to find new friends and help you grow your network if you don’t let me search for people? You may want to rethink that one.

And while I’m ranting about features that Twitter took away, remember when you go to your friends time line and see their interactions with other people? I liked that feature. Give it back, you jerks!

As Internet users go, I don’t think I’m all that hard to please. I just want what I want where I want it.  Eight years ago, Steve Krug wrote Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. You should be paying attention by now.  If not, you’re going to make me angry. And angry people don’t pay.