The Most Disliked Things On A Website

One of the startups that I ran into this week, is clearmeter.com. They have an interesting concept where they have tools to break down a website into all of its constituent components, and then get feedback from a cadre of User Experience Raters. That way, they can tell what works and what doesn't work. From this, they get an overall rating of the usability of the web site as well as its appeal.

There was an eye-opener for me that has ramifications for user experience. I was being given a demo of a website, and the most hated thing on the website were the social media buttons:

This was a major surprise. Somehow one has to convey the fact that they can be found on social media without the gaggle of social media icons. Perhaps there may be a separate page or menu item called connect that hides itself unless invoked, or it uses a jQuery layer that goes away.

One would have never guessed that there is "fatigue" from social media buttons. Check out clearmeter.com.