2. Remember the five-second rule. Vinod Khosla wants your website to tell him exactly what it’s about and why he should stay within five seconds of visiting.
Assume someone visits Healthcare.gov because they need health insurance. In other words, they’re looking for “Marketplace Coverage” - a phrase displayed in stylized, black type on a dark green swatch in what should be a high-visibility area of the homepage, but it’s not. Maybe I’m unfair - there’s a big link to “Apply Online” on the homepage, but what am I applying to? What is the Marketplace, even? How much is this all going to cost me? Why can’t I find any of that information before I apply?
I’ll say this in its defense - Healthcare.gov’s homepage is in itself a gargantuan study in usability, and they’re doing an admirable job with it. I’d be interested to see the early data on task completion through the site’s conversion funnels.
3. Ditch the social media. Nobody wants to share Healthcare.gov on Twitter. Nobody wants to like it on Facebook. And when I say “nobody,” I mean as of lunch hour, EST, October 29, Healthcare.gov has a mere 570 user tweets (or, for reference, about one tweet per 82 thousand uninsured citizens) and 8,100 Facebook “likes,” about 1/53 the number of “likes” earned by the group “Can this pickle get more likes than Nickelback?” Healthcare.gov’s “Share Your Story” link has the distinct aroma of an executive’s “cool idea” - a throw-in feature that leaves web admins rolling their eyes.
Just stop with the “me too” social media play. It’s not appropriate here, and the goal of this site should be to reduce diversions and clutter, presenting only the most relevant and simple information. A feel-good marketing play, in the context of a mandated federal government program, doesn’t, well, feel good.
4. Display the security certificates. The federal government doesn’t have a stellar track record when it comes to earning the public’s trust in how it handles the security of personal information. A link to the Privacy Policy in the footer of the site is not remotely enough notification to users of how their information will be used. Healthcare.gov needs to err on the side of the overshare in this regard. Security certificates, even if only emblematic, should be on all the sites’ web forms to help allay Big Brother-phobic users’ concerns.
5. Achieve amazingly, uncommonly, legendarily awesome load times, bandwidth and uptime. This is a structural and deeper technological aspect of the site, but it directly impacts usability. There’s nothing more unsettling than submitting a form containing your personal information only to be left waiting on a lagging dialogue screen while the server tries to process thousands of concurrent database requests. Downtime on a site like this is inexcusable; slowness and recurring 503 errors will enrage users and stoke bad press, in addition to setting ablaze many more taxpayer blog comment threads decrying the government’s incompetency.
It’s someone’s job to ensure the site is fast, load-balanced, prepared for immensely high traffic, and breach-proofed. I’m glad it’s not my job.
Speaking of my job, I should probably get back to it. There are websites that actually require my attention, unlike Healthcare.gov, which is currently working just fine.
