Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points

By David Dick

Some Web sites are better designed than others. They are not known for their animation or graphic-rich design, but for their ability to cope with problems that go wrong online. For example, how many times have you been confronted with form errors, Page Not Found errors, server problems, unhelpful Help screens, inaccurate search results, and out-of stock items? Plenty of times, I’m sure. What did you do? Chances are you bailed out and found another Web site that accommodated your needs that wasn’t complex. The result is a lost customer to the competition that has contingency design built into its site.

Defensive Design for the Web :How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points   By 37signals   Price: US$ 16.99   1st printing (March 2004)   246 pages

Defensive Design for the Web describes how to use contingency design to improve Web site design. You will learn guidelines, 40 in all, to prevent errors and rescue customers when things go wrong. You will learn how to make error recovery and prevention part of your design process, and how to evaluate your site’s contingency design so you can focus on the areas that need help most. What makes this book unique is that no other titles about Web site design tackle these issues. Lindermann and Fried use commercial Web sites as examples to compare and contrast the guidelines to achieve effective and user-friendly design. They describe seven strategies for contingency design:

• Provide clear instructions
• Create forms that are easy to complete
• Prevent missing pages, images, and plug-ins
• Offer help that’s actually helpful
• Eliminate obstacles to conversion (e.g. unnecessary ads, registration, and navigation)
• Deliver the right results with smart search engine assistance
• Prevent unavailable items (i.e. products or services) from becoming dead ends

At the time of printing the book (2004), the authors claim that the companies cited in the book are aware of the design flaws and may have already corrected them. Design for the Web concludes with a questionnaire to use as a guideline to evaluate a Web site. Whether you own or maintain a Web site or you are getting started in Web design, contingency design is essential and this book describes it best. I encourage you to read Defensive Design for the Web — you won’t be disappointed.

(Reprinted with permission from the Usability Interface (newsletter of the Usability SIG), August 2004. This article may have gone through minor editorial changes in compliance to Indus editorial standards. David Dick is the Editor of Usability Interface and a volunteer for the Washington D.C. Chapter.)