Hindering Tech-savvy Users

Guy Kawasaki’s blog, How to Change the World: A practical blog for impractical people, lists The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption.

His comments are aimed at commercial web sites, but many are valid for libraries and our vendors as well. They’re mostly things that would annoy tech-savvy users / customers, but we in libraries don’t want to alienate our tech-savvy patrons, do we?

These include:

• Long URLs (LexisNexis? Hello?)


• Windows that don’t generate URLs (I’m looking at you, SFX)


• Lack of feeds and email lists (RSS feeds for new books & other new library resources?)


• User names cannot contain the @ character (or, in the case of Scopus / Elsevier, THEY generate the user names – who can remember stephaniebrown18? Who wants to?)


• Supporting only Windows Internet Explorer (‘nuff said)

Also check out the lengthy comments from other readers of Guy’s post; there are even more good pet peeves!)