1. Include in the sign up form a drop-down signaling that the user can select his/her preferred language.

2. Make sure that only the default language setting is available in the drop-down.

As a consultant who frequently works on site for client organizations, I am yet to see an intranet that doesn't frustrate users.

Here are the most common problems I've experienced with intranets:

Broken information architecture. Everything you would never need at a minute's notice is one click away: staff event photos, press clippings, corporate values. On the other hand, good luck finding contact information and important forms and how-tos.

Broken phone directory. Out-of-date listings; terrible search functionality that doesn't allow you to choose between last and first name for your query, or doesn't present the job title and photo along with the results, making it impossible to differentiate employees with the same name.

Broken search functionality. Simple queries such as "office locations" either return 74,000 results (none of the top ones containing the expected office addresses), or zero.

“If your users are using the search engine 70% of the time or more, it’s probably broken.”

According to this 2007 online survey from Accenture, managers spend up to two hours a day searching for information, and when they do find it, it is often wrong:

Nearly three out of five respondents (59 percent) said that as a consequence of poor information distribution, they miss information that might be valuable to their jobs almost every day because it exists somewhere else in the company and they just can not find it. In addition, 42 percent of respondents said they accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week, and 53 percent said that less than half of the information they receive is valuable.

Related articles:

Intranet grassroots to greatness

Malcolm Coles has been reviewing the usability of taps and how it translates to web design.

Among the lessons,

If you're writing loads of help text for your site or tools because of problems in usability testing, there's something wrong with the interface. Start again. From scratch. Help text is not the answer.

How many times have you seen a link to an online resource that seemed interesting, and clicked on the link only to be taken to a form saying "Please sign up or log in to your account to access this page"?

This happens frequently with me, always with the same result: bouncing.

What is going to take to get people to understand that this model is broken?

Please go read Sign Up Forms Must Die, by Luke Wroblewski, and learn how smart web services use the process of gradual engagement, letting users learn first what you have to offer, before asking them to provide an email address, select a password, tell you their name, their location, verify this strange word and agree to your terms of service.


One of Wroblewski's examples, Geni (a website that allow users to build a family tree), has produced five million profiles in five months with their gradual engagement approach. Do you really think your "register first" approach is better?


Update:

I started reading Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki right after writing this post, and was happy to see the author offer a similar advice:

In: Chapter 32, "Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption"

1. Enforced, immediate registration. Requiring a new user to register and provide a modicum of information is a reasonable request--just do it after you've sucked the person in. Most sites require registration as the first step, and this puts a barrier in front of adoption. At the very least, companies could ask for name and e-mail addres but not require it until a later time.

Kawasaki's book was included in Amazon's Top 10 Editors' Pick in Business & Investing for 2008, and there wouldn't be so many broken interactions in the Internet if more web designers and online content owners read it. Buy it following the link on this post and using Amazon's one-click checkout, and you will be also helping a charitable cause.