➤ Facebook stumblers
Many people have Google set as their homepage, or just go there automatically because “that’s where the internet starts.” The difference between the address bar and Google’s input field is lost on them. They’re both things where you type stuff to get places, and it takes a huge amount of sophistication to see past that superficial semantic equivalence. Want a Facebook login? Type that! Wherever! You’ll get there somehow, even if you have to click an extra link. Who cares?
The cognitive load of remembering where to type what is just not worth it to most people when it only saves you a single click (most of the time).
I had quite the conversation about this story at home on Sunday as well. Here’s what I think are also major factors to what happened:
People don’t want URLs
Really, why bother understanding the difference between .com or .net when Google is there? Remember, we’re talking about people introduced to the web after near-perfect search was introduced. Most of “us” learned our internet skills well before web search existed. Hell, even Tim Berners-Lee has apologized for making URLs more complicated that they should be; This is why AOL keywords worked.
People use what we’ve given them
Automatic searches in the location bar. Default start pages with oversized search fields. Search toolbars and text inputs in the upper right. The truth is, unless you want to learn how to write code, you will follow the path of least resistance to get what you want from a browser. Don’t blame them for using the tools you added to make search easier. It’s encouraged behavior, really.
People use Windows, on the whole
And remember, when you type “facebook” you have to hold down a button to visit “http://www.facebook.com” and not “http://facebook/”. The default behavior is broken in an era where computers are not being used primarily in university computer labs. Newer browsers fix this problem, but AFAIK Internet Explorer still has this behavior.
All it takes is one broken experience with a location bar, for a user to get a satisfactory experience from the search bar instead. And even us experts do it too: We try to guess the URL for a product (like Basecamp) and it doesn’t work, so we search.
Now why the hell would a non-expert ever think “Hmmm, let me try and guess this page’s location?”
And after a successful search, why would they think “Hmmm. Let me memorize this code for the page’s location, instead of repeating exactly what I did next time I want to come here.”
No really. Why?
So let’s stop blaming people for not being “smart enough” to figure out our secret website handshakes and start focusing on making it easier to get them to content.
