I have a bank account that rebates all ATM fees so I don’t care about which bank I visit to withdraw cash.  I’ve never paid attention to the amount of the fees, but if I did, I would consider paying more for a better user experience.  About 6 months ago, I had my first experience with the redesigned Bank of America ATM’s.  What an improvement!  Bank of America, or more likely the firm they hired, certainly thought through the user experience and did some testing prior to deployment.  As a result, if I have a choice, I will always use the Bank of America ATM solely based on superior usability.  Bank of America made these improvements in response to an update by Wells Fargo so hopefully they will continue to compete on user experience.

Of course there are other examples.  For regional travel, nothing beats http://southwest.com.  I thought their most recent updates were a step backwards, but Southwest still holds a major usability advantage that captures my business over other airlines.  In the airline business, the most frustrating brands are those that refuse to acknowledge the problem.

As more companies realize the advantages of superior user experience, usability will become a competitive matter, improving for all of us.  This trend is already accelerating in mobile applications because limited interface options dictate superior core task functionality as a requirement, even for bad designers.

Do you have any differentiating user experiences to share?

Mobile web and email is a throwback to the early days of the internet.  Users have a small screen and limited functionality, so usability is extremely important.  The solution is to test your emails on a number of different devices and incorporate features like a “view mobile version of this email” link in your header.

Here is a more comprehensive list of mobile email considerations from September:
http://theemailwars.com/2009/09/29/mobile-should-you-care/

Call me if you need help making your email mobile friendly.  Otherwise, happy holidays!

- Never break standard browser functions:
My friends at AT&T thought it would be a good idea to move the cursor from one field to the next after I entered the proper number of characters for the field I was editing.  For example, on phone number, once you type 3 digits in the area code field, the site automatically moves you to the number prefix box.  I’m sure someone at AT&T thought it was a good idea that would make things easier, but after using the internet for 14 years and expecting to use the tab key or mouse, it was more frustrating than helpful.  I find it hard to believe that this was user tested before deployment and there’s no excuse for that when you have the website budget of AT&T.

- Make your website work with all common browsers:
http://www.mykplan.com: These guys aren’t kidding about the compatible browser list in the left column.  This website has a lot of issues, but the biggest offender is that the site only works with Internet Explorer.  I use a Mac, so none of my browsers worked.  I could access the necessary forms, but was unable to enter any information.  Having a website that only worked with certain browsers stopped being OK at least five years ago.

- Avoid drop-down menus:
This will be the most controversial issue on this post, but after suffering through multiple drop-downs, mostly to enter my state, I agree with Jakob Nielsen on this one: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/annoyances.html

- Don’t ignore your error messages.

Following web standards and properly testing functionality before launching any website or addition is cheap and easy.  If you need help, contact me.

What other common problems do you encounter with online forms?