I moved to Australia almost eight years ago. Since then I have become somewhat of a coffee connoisseur (or snob, depends on who you talk to) and no longer sit in ignorant bliss sipping back on Tim Horton’s coffee while downing a box of Timbits.

I now join in enthusiastically at international web conferences with fellow Aussies, complaining bitterly about the state of coffee outside of the motherland (yup, I’m talking to you Austin, Texas) and secretly yearn for a good flat white upon arrival home to Sydney.

But here’s the catch, it’s not just the flavour of that coffee that I crave, it’s the whole experience. A good cup of coffee starts before you enter the cafe and lingers with you while you are still back at your desk working away, sipping on those last dregs.

This goes the same for websites and the experiences we have loving them, ignoring them or huddling in a group together openly tearing them to pieces. A lot can be learned from a simple cup of coffee.

Location, Location, Location

A great location is just the start. Whether it is a good shop just down the road from your workplace or like my coffee today, a new spot discovered as I was just leaving the gym, serendipity can add that extra bit of pleasure to the greater coffee experience.

Nobody likes the coffee shop that is too far from work, is across on the other side of the park or is simply in a place that lacks any kind of atmosphere all together. Often you will compromise the coffee’s quality to compensate for bad location. A trip to the ‘good coffee shop’ becomes a treat, rather than the daily routine.

Online, this can be translated into being findable and discoverable. Recently I have been looking for t-shirt printing services in Australia yet the websites I find are either in America (no shipping outside the States, thanks very much) or are straight up horrible.

To find what I need I have had to do a lot of digging. Emailing connections, finding names of actual companies and looking harder than I should. Being findable via major search engines such as Google, Yahoo Search, etc. means you will get more incidental traffic. This organic traffic will eventually lead to more routine and frequent visitors to your website.

Acknowledge my Existence

When I enter a cafe I expect to to make eye contact with someone that works there, I want to place my order and then stand aside. You can take a while to make my coffee, that’s fine, just acknowledge me and establish a connection so I understand you are working on my order in the background.

Making coffees, handling the cash register and trying to pop toast in the grill while I stand there for 5 minutes being ignored starts to agitate me. I feel unimportant… and suddenly I feel like I am at the bar on a Friday night desperately trying to get the attention of a bartender who knows they have the upper hand.

This goes the same for users first entering your website. You need to acknowledge them, meet their eyes and get to know what they want. This includes knowing your demographic, knowing why people initially visit your site (what search terms are driving traffic? Are they the terms you anticipated?) and making sure the information is there for them to consume.

My t-shirt search lead me to many websites with all sorts of random information that had nothing to do with what I needed. I want to know the price and location, so give it to me right away. Some websites had prices upon email only, this wasn’t good enough. Others had convoluted online ‘t-shirt quoters’ that would take me ten minutes to fill in, yet give me almost useless information.

Don’t show me blogs, news or weather apps if they are not relevant. Know why I am using your website (at least attempt to, it’s not always black and white) and provide me with that eye contact so I know you are working on my order.

Cheap Cups, Cheap Experience

There’s nothing I hate more than cups with blatant advertising on them. It’s not just the advertising but these cups are usually made of cheaper material, feel wrong in your hands and (I swear to this day) change the taste of a perfectly good cup of coffee.

This is exactly the same for online experiences. A professional website should look just that, professional. If you are in e-commerce, online retail or any other service trying to win the trust of users or customers you need to make a site that looks trustworthy.

Unfortunately, this usually means spending more money or putting a bit more research into those designers and developers that are going to assemble your companies website. You don’t have to break your budget, you just have to present a website that looks like you have invested some time and effort into your own product.

Make it Easy for Me

A cafe I used to frequent last month would take your order alright, but after that it all fell apart. You would be tossed back into the scrum of others waiting for their coffee and soon it would resemble the mosh at a Henry Rollins concert.

In contrast, I recently visited one of my older haunts and noticed a great improvement. They added a small table divider to their restaurant, causing those ordering takeaway coffees to naturally form a civilised line without really thinking about it. Before you knew it, you were on your way with the correct coffee in hand, totally stress free.

This can apply to websites when you think about how to direct your users and ‘not make them think’. What tasks might the users need to accomplish from your homepage and how might they approach each of these tasks? What path might they take, or create to get what they want?

Test these scenarios, are the users breaking anything? Is it something you have overlooked and can now plan for through better information architecture? Don’t think that users will establish their own order or figure out your own in-house conventions. This will lead to people leaving your website in frustration and spreading the bad word.

Finally, Don’t Burn the Milk

Okay, now that we finally have our coffee it better be good. Don’t make it too hot, don’t make it too cold, don’t put too much sugar in and finally, don’t burn the milk! It all comes down to the taste of the coffee and no matter how many great things you have going for you, if the coffee sucks you won’t go far.

Same with online, you can mask crappy content in the shiniest, reflective, rounded-corner web 2.0 interface. If the content is not there to support it your website will fail.

People will hang around and play with the gadgets, slider bars and gallery fades for just a little while, but in the end it comes down to the quality of the content and if it’s not there then people will move on to the next thing and most likely won’t be back for more.