A great online shopping experience makes happy returning customers! And that’s best explained by examples of a bad experience. Let me take you on a little journey of examples in daily life.
For that you need to understand what “design” technically means. From there it’s much easier to understand what defines accessible and inaccessible design.
Form (design) follows function, not the other way around. Example: Expensive, artfully designed designer chairs for a fancy restaurant, on which people taller than 1.70 meters cannot sit comfortably. Beautiful art, failed design. With such chairs, many guests will leave the restaurant early and never come back.
The main purpose of your online store is to generate revenue. If the artistic factor in the design gets in the way of finding, ordering, and paying for your products or services, you will exclude an unexpectedly high number of potential customers.
„Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.“
Steve Jobs, co-founder Apple
With an inclusive, accessible design, many bad experiences in an online store can be avoided.
Further down this page, you’ll find some real-life examples that many can relate to. They are annoyances we all know. Even if you are not disabled (yet) and do not need assistive technology (yet).
That’s where I come in. And if you want to maximize the user experience through accessible, inclusive design at a reasonable cost, make sure to get me on board long before mood boards, copy, and functionality are set in stone.
I’ll be the one to bring all parties involved in the creation of your web store up to speed. The graphic design team, the developers, the people who write copy and create and upload media like images and videos for products and blog articles.
The “Pick a date” link below takes you to my Calendly page. If you have issues scheduling there, please send me an E-mail.
Adding a color panel to filter on in your web shop is no use to someone who is color-blind (1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women), when it does not have the description too.
And then there’s achromatopsia, for example, where you can only distinguish shades of gray.
Book a free introductory consultation. I look forward to bringing you up to speed quickly and giving you some food for thought.
You can't find the way because there are no signs. And the person at the counter explains it to you in a most incomprehensible way.
Not being able to find your way around a web shop can have several causes. Because navigation is based on symbols without text, for example. Not everyone understands all these symbols! Or because navigation is based on colours which sucks for people who are colour-blind (1 in 12 men), and many more.
Sliders, video backgrounds and animations have that same effect on people with cognitive disabilities (ADHD and autism, for example).
But even for people who are simply tired, a moving circus sucks.
In a physical store this can have various reasons. Because you can’t climb the stairs, for example.
On a web site a simple cookie or newsletter popup can block someone who uses keyboard or voice navigation.
Speaking of smacking the door in someone’s face.
Insufficient color contrast and small fonts are an immense barrier. Not only to people with extreme loss of vision. Also to most who are over 45.
You don’t always realise it, but at some point your vision declines. Light grey text on a white background may seem fancy. To me, for example, it’s unreadable.