This morning I thought I’d write a quick post outlining one of the important aspects of our website design philosophy: never offer your visitors something they can’t have. Do you remember how, when you were little, your brother or sister or cousin used to hold something out for you, and then as you grabbed for it, they’d yell “Psych!”, and pull it away? Remember how you hated it? Your visitors don’t like it today any more than you did then.

So what do we mean, in practical terms? Well, the most obvious thing to do is not to use “under construction” pages. If the page or section isn’t ready yet, don’t put it on your site. There are those who will argue that an under construction page creates interest and anticipation for the new section by letting users know that a new section is being developed. If you want to let your users know about the new section, create a feature block on your home page with a “Coming Soon” notice. This will tell the users at a glance everything you want them to know. Providing a link in the menu to a section implies that the section is complete and available, so when the visitor arrives at an “under construction” page, they don’t feel excited – they feel disappointed and cheated.

Similarly, you should not show login forms or “register now” links to users who are already logged in. Neither should you offer login forms on your site if no users can ever log in. This sounds a little silly, but it was one of the deciding factors when we considered how we would construct our CMS. One of the very first questions we had to answer was, do we manage the content on the site itself, or do we build a separate administration site to handle all content management? If we had chosen to handle management on the site itself, we would have required a login on the site, which would only ever have been used by the site admin. Users of the sites would have been tantalised by the knowledge of a hidden area of the site they couldn’t get to, which would only frustrate them.

In the same vein, if you have a product catalogue on your site, it’s important to update items that are sold or out of stock. If an item is temporarily out of stock, it’s ok to keep it in the main catalogue with a notice that it will soon be back in stock. However, items that are completely sold out should be moved, after a day or two, to an archive section. It’s frustrating for customers to have their screen filled with items they can’t actually buy. And if you do have a product catalogue on your site, make it very clear to your customers how they can buy your products. If you have an online shopping system, perfect. If not, use feature blocks and clear navigation to ensure your customers can find their nearest retailer or contact you to order.

Don’t psych your visitors out! Make sure they can find what they need on your site and aren’t distracted by links, forms, calls to action or other items that don’t directly serve your site’s goals.