Users are Still Lazy

Among my former employer Joel Spolky’s wisest words were these: “Users are lazy”. That means: don’t make them do stuff. Don’t ask them to enter info or register or download software.

You can help users be lazy in many ways; for instance, by ridding your site of browser-specific features, such as custom scroll bars, that may require a user to view your site in another browser. (They won’t.)

But sometimes they will. I had a phase during which I tried out the Opera browser. But as soon as my bank site and Google Documents told me they didn’t support Opera, you bet I went back to Firefox. Why? Because I need those sites.

But you don’t have to store a user’s docs or all of their money to be useful enough for them to interact with you. MySpace and Facebook, for instance, do not require any interaction past registration, yet they are a flurry of activity. Because by posting on those sites, users are gaining social interaction, and sadly, social acceptance.

The staff at my very own Evolvist.com have engaged in many UI battles, since most of our data is user-generated. How do we make users nominate businesses for our directory? There were two easy solutions. One: target business owners, who have nothing to lose and only money to gain by submitting their own business information. Two: Glorify users who nominate many businesses through our social network. Display stats, show their avatar, and otherwise thank the user for being such a good greenie.

Remember, you can get a user to interact with your site. But first ask the question: what does the user gain? If the answer is not “money”, “sex” or perhaps “social acceptance”, directly or indirectly, they simply won’t bother.