In relation to me - the two stores are remarkably equal in many ways. They are both approximately the same distance from my house, they are priced comparably and 99% of their offerings are identical.

Having said this - I go to the Giant Foods as infrequently as possible and almost always regret making the decision.

Mostly, I go there for the salad bar (which is the only way they are better than Safeway) or when I happen to be near by and I only need something simple (loaf of bread, gallon of milk, diet cokes etc.).

The reason for this is their lack of usability.

This all started a few years back when they expanded and remodeled their store. Like many of their patrons, I had to re-educate myself on how to navigate the store to get the items I need (the peanuts are where now? what about the chocolate milk?).

The problem is, that just when I feel like I’ve gotten everything figured out - they move stuff around again. And it is never anything that feels at all intuitive.

When you couple this with the fact that most food manufacturers seem to be going on some kind of repackaging kick - the result is I can’t find anything.

Today was a perfect example. I went with my daughter to get some salad for lunch and I remembered being low or out of croûtons and salad dressing. So while she was dilly-dallying with her salad I went to the same aisle I’ve gone to for at least a year to get my regular croûtons and as I walked down the aisle I experienced an epic fail.

The croûtons I’ve always purchased there - were no where to be found. They weren’t just out of them - they weren’t there. Something else was in its place.

Granted, there were some croutons down at the far end of the aisle, a bit removed from where I would have looked for them - but they weren’t any of the brands or styles or packages I was looking for.

Plus, I was already a little pissed I couldn’t find my preferred salad dressing and that my second choice of dressing was in a different kind of bottle making it harder for me to find on the shelf.

The end result was - I left the store minus the croûtons.

All in all the whole experience made me feel like I was a stranger in a store that I go to a few times a month.

The Crofton Safeway on the other hand seems to have what I need exactly (or pretty damn close to) where I might be looking for it. They not only have aisles organized by food types (canned food, pasta, etc.) but the aisles themselves are grouped according to how you might use the items (Snack Time, Baking Time, Breakfast Time, etc.).

In addition, they always seem to be thinking of what else I might want when I am looking for something else. For instance, even though they have chocolate milk powder in a food aisle where you would expect to find chocolate milk - they have also have chocolate milk powder conveniently next to the milk itself. The same is true for a dozens of these complimentary goods.

I know there is a whole theory behind product placement in grocery stores, and that the store itself probably benefits from me having to wander down aisle after aisle looking for something. After all - who knows what else I might pick up along the way because the package was all bright and shiny. But for me - it just isn’t working.

When it comes to grocery shopping I am what you might call a casual user. I don’t have the time, energy or interest in having to learn where everything is in a grocery store. 95% of the food items I purchase are always the same, so I expect them to be in the same place. I expect the store to make it easier on me - not more difficult.

Smart video game designers always design games that are very easy for the casual gamer to pick up every once in a while to play, but they also know they need to design it so that it takes many hours for the more serious gamer to master (World of Warcraft as an example).

My question is - why can’t Giant Foods?

Here now is my quick and short list of things you should do to benefit your casual user:

1) Don’t make them feel like a stranger.

Most of us should know this, but it always amazes me how often people do something so radical on their website that it takes a few seconds to comprehend what is going on. Whether it is a new navigation scheme or simply a new way of naming things - these sites never make it easy to just drop in.

2) Try to anticipate what else they might need.

I love sites that give you links to related posts (if I ever put a lot of content on this site, I’ll need to do this). But it doesn’t just have to be additional posts - other kinds of content work also (photos, music, external links, etc.). Using tags to organize your web site is a great way to follow the Safeway example of providing navigation by food item and the time of day you might use it.

3) Put what they might be looking for (and what you want them to find) in more than one place.

I also love sites that put a few different links back to the home page (for instance on my site you can click the big “Vinny Goldsmith” at the top, but you can also click the link that says “Home”). I also like sites that give their main navigation links at the bottom of the page - even if it is only an exact duplicate of what is at the top. Plus, if your content is presented across different pages (why would you do this?!?) - at least provide a way to click to the next and previous pages from the top and the bottom of the content.

BTW - I’m amazed whenever I get to a page from some external source (a link, a search result) and there isn’t any obvious link back to the main page of the website. This is just stupid design.

4) Trust your instincts and use common sense.

A few years back Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) decided to change the way they called their various parking options. It used to be that long term parking had color names (Long Term Blue, Long Term Green, etc), and that shorter parking options had letters (Short Term A, Short Term B, etc.) and all was right with the world.

Then for some inexplicable reason, they changed everything when they built some new structures. Now, everything is called a letter. So BWI has parking options that are Long Term A as well as Short Term A - the same is true of Long Term B and Short Term B, etc. etc..

Needless to say, for the uninitiated it can all be fairly confusing.

While away in Cabo San Lucas or Las Vegas, you need to remember which lot letter you parked in - as well as whether that lot was long term or short term (not to be confused with daily and/or hourly). And since all of the shuttles to these parking lots pick-up from the same location, there is always one or two hapless travelers who mistakenly get on the wrong bus.

While a bunch of us on a shuttle bus were lamenting this change and pondering what kind of person would come up with a scheme we were given the answer by another rider who claimed to be in the know: it was a consultant who came up with the scheme. He (or she) created it as a way of making the airport’s parking easier to understand.

My word of advice - if you’re going to engage the services of a usability consultant (and if you manage something complex you certainly should) - make sure all of their recommendations make sense to you and to someone who is a complete stranger to your website.

Further reading on Grocery Store Usability and Usability in general:

Don’t Make Me Think

First off, if you manage any kind of website and you haven’t read Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think, then you need to turn off your computer and go read this book right now. Seriously. It is the best book written on the subject of design and usability and you can read it in a weekend (usually a sign of a well-written book). If it was me, I’d probably make it required reading in high schools. It is much more informative and useful than something like “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

Related Blog Entries

Way back in November of 2004 Drew McLellan of All in the <Head> did a rant on this very subject: Supermarket Usability.

Over at ClickZ Jack Aaronson talked about Brand vs. Usability using grocery stores as an example as he looked for the middle ground.

And over at LoveYourUsers there is a post called The Thrill of Grocery Shopping that discusses their experience walking around a new grocery store and all the things they did right (including the fact that they gave out maps!).

For a good blog on usability I recommend Dr. Pete’s User Effect.

I hope all this helps - and happy grocery shopping.

Giant Foods of Crofton - you suck!

Four months ago the boy started complaining about how his knee was hurting him, and after a visit to Dr. Cashman we decided it was time to take out what had been put in.

And that brings us to last Friday morning.

The ex-wife had flown in to be with her only son as he went through the surgery, and to coddle and wait on him post-surgery as only a mother can.

And as the boy, his sister, his mother and I all sat around waiting for the surgery to begin he said “you know, you don’t have to wait here the whole time. Once I go back there if you want to run out and do stuff, I’m okay with that”.

“That’s very cool of you” I replied “because, although I said I’d suffer through with you on the whole ‘not eating prior to surgery’ thing, when I made that promise I didn’t think it was going to be this long. So I’ll probably run out somewhere to get something to eat.”

“That’s cool” the boy replied.

“So it will be just like when you were born” his mom chimed in.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“Oh, here we go again” I groaned “I knew this was going to come up today. That was 16 years, 3 months and 1 day ago - and yet I knew it was going to come up today.”

Their mother rolled her eyes and before she could speak I interrupted.

“You kids want to know my side of the story?” I asked as I awaited their nods.

“When your mom was pregnant with Vinny, they thought he was getting too big so they wanted to induce your mom into labor. The date that was chosen was December 26th - the day after Christmas. We showed up at the hospital bright and early at about 7am and they hooked your mom up to the drugs that would make her go into labor.

“The problem was, she wasn’t ready to go into labor and the drugs weren’t having any affect. So at about 5pm they said they were going to take her off of the drugs and let us go home - but we had to stick around for another 3 or 4 hours just to make sure nothing wacky happened.

“Well, sure enough, about 4 hours later she went into labor.

“And at this point the only thing she had really had to eat all day was ice chips - because they didn’t want her eating any food in case they needed to do an emergency surgery.

“As for me - I had a few things to eat early in the day, but didn’t get a chance to get any dinner.

“Both my mom and your mom’s mom had brought me a burger from the hospital cafeteria - but it was a cheeseburger and as you know - I don’t like cheese. So I was getting pretty hungry.

“Around 10pm your mom was going through some labor pains, but they told us it would be at least another few hours.

“I was really hungry so I casually asked the nurse if there was a fast food place nearby that I could run to real quick.

“Before the nurse even had a chance to answer, your mom screeched at me and asked ‘are you really thinking of leaving me during labor to go out and get something to eat - even though I’ve had nothing to eat all day?!?’

“Of course, upon hearing that I knew what the right answer should be and I said “no, I’ll stay here with you - I wasn’t that hungry in the first place.

“And that was that - I didn’t go anywhere to eat, I only asked if there was someplace nearby and obviously your mom still brings it up to this day”.

After a minute or two the boy asked “So, it basically sounds like the same kind of thing - how exactly is it different from when I was born?”

“Because” I said “this time I know where the closest place to eat is”.

If you’re like me you live and browse on the fly, making changes here and there, adding things and subtracting things as you see fit. Spring gives us a good excuse to take a break and clean up some of the clutter we’ve accumulated both online and off.

For those of us who live and work on the Internet - here is my Spring Cleaning Checklist:

__ Check all of your web sites for broken links (W3C Broken Link Checker)

__ Check all of your web sites for valid mark-up (W3C Markup Validator and W3C CSS Markup Validator)

__ Check your web sites for load time (Web Page Analyzer Load Time Check)

__ Check your website for Usability (Daily Bits Essential Web Usability Checklist and Dr. Pete’s Measuring Usability)

__ Update, Add and Remove any Plug-ins from Firefox or your browser of choice

__ Update your robots.txt exclusion file (Sebastian’s Pamphlets)

__ Using your analytics software review your visitors browsing capabilities and make any adjustments necessary

__ Delete any extraneous or out-of-date RSS feeds from your feed reader

__ Update any public profiles (this includes claiming or unclaiming blogs on sites like Technorati, MyBlogLog, etc.)

__ Update your Blogging Software and any Plug-Ins and Themes

__ Clean out old e-mails and e-mail folders (I have folders for things like “upcoming travel and events”, “act on this” and “read later” - they always have old stuff in them).

__ Clean out and organize your bookmarks/favorites from your Internet Browser

__ Clean out any favorites you no longer want from your RSS Reader and any social bookmarking sites

__ Update your forum signatures

__ Get rid of and 301 any old web sites or blogs

__ Update the settings in your Analytics software, Webmaster Central, and Google Adsense settings

__ Clean out the Temp file directory, Cookies and Recycle Bin on your computer

Did I miss anything?

I guess you could say this is actually about the Internet in general, but I’m going to talk about blogging specifically.

I remember way back when I first heard about hyper-links I thought it was the greatest thing ever.

It was probably the mid-80’s, and the story was on some news special about an information system that would provide additional information (via clickable text) on whatever you were reading. I think the actual information system they were discussing was an encyclopedia or something - it certainly wasn’t related to anything called the Internet.

This was great news for me. I spent large portions of my life with my nose deep in a book and if I wanted to learn something more about what I was reading, or I had additional questions - I had to wait until my next trip to my library and hope the information would be there.

Then, in the mid-90s the Internet exploded. By the year 2000 any information you could possibly be looking for could be found somewhere online.

But blogging takes it all to the next level. With blogging, you often find information you want - but not something you were necessarily looking for.

Let’s take today for example. I have about 6 hours of uninterrupted time before I have to start getting ready for a play I am going to tonight. So I thought I would catch up on making some entries into the handful of blogs I’m trying to keep current.

To get some ideas and inspiration I went to the blog of one of my fellow SEOMoz members: Montessori for Everyone. Lori is a self-described “stay-at-home, homeschooling mom” and she has done a tremendous job with her combination blog and e-commerce web site. I think it is an exceptional model for a small home based business that utilizes the Internet to have a big impact.

I visit her blog from time to time - whenever I have the time. And today when I clicked on her “About” page I noticed she had a personal blog as well.

And that is when things took off.

From her personal blog I found this entry on blogging and boundaries.

[side note: another SEOMoz friend posted a similar entry over at her blog on SEOSmarty (beyond niche blogging).]

Lori’s entry talked about Penelope Trunk’s blog so I clicked on that (and since I liked three of four of the entries I read - I added her to my already over-flowing rss reader).

Penelope had an entry where she talked about getting back on track - and on there she had a link to Guy Kawasaki’s new web site called Alltop which has already become one of my favorite web sites - even though I didn’t even know about it an hour ago.

If it wasn’t for Lori blogging about Penelope blogging about Guy’s Alltop - and all of them sharing the link love - I wouldn’t have found out about Alltop today - and that is what makes Blogging the best way to get and share information.

And these kinds of connections happen tens-of-millions of times a day all across the Internet between bloggers and their readers.

Now, sure I would have eventually found out about Alltop - but blogging makes such discoveries happen even faster.

Alright, now I have to get back to blogging for real.

—–

P.S. - it just occurred to me that this whole post is an example of inadvertent keyword stuffing. Oh well.