Why Does Marketing Hate Usability?

I hate to admit this because it feels selfish and I don’t want to appear like a usability activist. But. It secretly bothers me when I see conferences or seminars on website marketing that don’t offer a session on user centered design. I always wonder why this is. Is usability that scary?

Time and time again I will witness or be part of a conversation where a site owner will ask, “What is wrong with my website? It’s not selling/working/ranking/etc.” You can insert the word, but it always means a failure to perform. Since the target market is nearly always human, it seems strange that advice starts and stops at the source code or methodology for improving optimization. Sometimes marketing techniques are discussed in the conversation. Other times, content manipulation and placement of text are mentioned. These are all important to know how to properly implement.

What I want to know is how to make a site work for people so it will do what they want it to do. The user centered design process rides on the back of every search engine marketer out there who is responsible for getting the site to the people it is targeted to, without freaking out search engines. If a site is penalized, or ranked low in SERPS, it is not reaching its visitors. If the site has usability and accessibility problems, it is not reaching its visitors either.

Even if a site does rank well, has a beautiful description in SERPS (search results pages), has a helpful list of additional site links to key areas of the site listed below the main domain and otherwise effectively lures someone in for the click, a lot can happen to completely ruin all that hard work that it took to get the site there.

The landing page could totally suck.

This is why more and more SEO/M’s include usability audits, some extensive and some basic, in with their marketing services. They know a bad site when they see it. While some will take your money and not care what happens to your luck after they optimize your site and prepare it for search, there are many more who want their clients to be successful so that they will return for maintenance, or to try more things to keep the momentum going. Usually site audits inspire new plans to do exactly that.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. It’s not how a site looks that makes or breaks its chances for success. It’s how it enables someone to complete a task. Comments

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