It’s World Usability Day (yay!) and I want to give Merrill Lynch Home Loans props for using plain language on their Convenient Loan Closing folder*. 

President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act last month which says that government documents should be written in plain language that is “clear, concise, well-organized, and follows other best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience." Have you looked at your organization’s website through the plain language lens lately?  

Many websites are riddled with jargon and would benefit from aggressive editing. The biggest culprits that are probably costing you money are your transaction pages. Recent examples I have seen users struggle with during testing are: 

·         Form fields that require completion even when the user is logged in

·         Requiring a user to select a shipping option when they are trying to download a free publication

·         Expecting a user to know the transaction is successful when “your transaction is complete” is not stated on the thank you page

·         Not having a thank you page

Don’t place all blame for the poor transaction pages on your AMS and CRM vendors. Insist on better, usable changes to these pages. If all clients asked for a plain process, your members and users would thank you and you would spend a lot less money on customization.

Visit the www.plainlanguage.gov page for tools and tips, including the Dirty Dozen word suggestions (definitely SFW) http://goo.gl/1Xaeu.

Happy Usability Day!

*N.B.  Props are not being given to the mortgage industry as there were at least 30 signatures and 20 initials required on the documents.

Dina Lewis, CAE is president of Distilled Logic, LLC. Twitter:  @dinalew