Diego's Lifestream

Recently I received an email from ark.com wishing me a happy new year & offering me a $5 coupon.

Mind you, I have no idea what ark.com is and what they do.
But like a schmuck I am curious and click on the link. 

When I get to their website I get this:

I am looking at this page and I still don’t get it.

I decide to click on “New to Ark? Join” and I get this:

I don’t know yet why I would join the site so I decided to click to “home” and then from there I click on the about link on the footer.

Which takes me to their facebook page:

At this point I leave frustrated and tweet that the site pretty much sucks.

I still don’t know what ark is and I am about to mark them as spam in my email client.

After a friend tells me something about their tag line I search for it on the homepage.

I finally realize that I can click on the bottom tag line, that one below the footer that seems part of the footer.

Which finally takes me to an explanation by hiding the homepage, moving the footer to the header and revealing a previously hidden explanation of what ark does.

This is in my opinion horrible design and UX and here is why:

1. My experience, first and foremost. I am on websites 12+ hours a day and I gave upon the navigation while trying to figure out why I should join in. How many others have done the same. I’d put some event tracking on that homepage and figure out how many people have done the same. The bounce rate on that page must be monstrous.
2. Go look at the homepage again, look at it for 10 seconds, which is way more the casual user will spend on it & tell me what they do. What? got nothing? You should look at the homepage have a least a vague idea of what the site is about in less than 2 seconds.
3. I don’t think the arrow down graphic below a footer is enough indication that you can click on something. 
4. Clicking on a below footer graphic to reveal anything is pretty much a bad idea. I can’t think of any website that does something like this, thus is not a common convention. 
5. Why in hell would you hide the reason to join? If I had a scrollbar on the right I would have known that something was missing from the page. That could have been the clue that I needed to click on the arrow or to scroll down myself and find out what the site is about. They might as well have hidden the signup button.

Designers need to realize that people spend 99% of their time on other websites which in turn sets up conventions and expectations for your possible customers. Don’t be too clever or you’ll alienate your visitors. When you drive down the street you don’t expect the street signs to be posted inside of the stores, why would you do the equivalent on a website.

Your business depends on ambient findability & ease of use.

Respect your customers & their mental models.

(Time to get back to play with my boy)