For example, CDnow, obviously for branding and to show cover art, they can't just be a blank white site with no graphics. But they had some kind of background psychedelic graphics on many, many pages. We saw a lot of use of graphics used for text links, that slows the process down too. We look at that as being not good.

The one common denominator that people have is they know if it is a blue text link, you can click it. Graphics are more ambiguous. Sometimes you can click it, sometimes you can't. You have to move the cursor over the graphic to see if "I can click that" or not. It is not necessarily intuitive, "Oh yeah, I can click that."

So, we saw a lot of overuse of graphics. We are not saying images aren't important. [We're saying you need to] develop the balance between image and just having a lot of flashy graphics for the sake of having them. We found a lot of sites are still doing that.

"The serious flaws identified in the report speak to the Web's woeful lack of user friendliness."

One of the things we found was the use of plug-ins, having to download a plug-in to buy something. My partner is a heavy-duty Mac guy, he wanted to buy a new G3. This was an actual hands-on test. We weren't doing it for the report. He really wanted to buy a new computer.

He didn't want to pay by credit card. He went online. He configured his machine. Up to the time when he actually went to buy it, he figured Apple was one of the best sites we had looked at. So did I. It was clean, the descriptions were clear, they did a really good job of allowing people to configure systems, without throwing a lot of jargon that a lot of people aren't going to know.

When it came time to actually buy the computer, it said, "OK, for you to complete the process, you need to print out a copy of your order and fax it in to us." To even do that you have to download Adobe's Acrobat reader. So, [he was] not happy, but he did it. He downloaded it. It took him about an hour. It was a several meg file. But it gets worse: After all that, he's got it installed, and he goes to bring up the order so he can print it out -- and it says, "Due to inactivity on this order, the order has timed out. Please start over." He is definitely a mac-o-phile, so he sucked it up and went through it.

I'm not even suggesting there's a lost sale. But what I am suggesting is that Apple is out there touting its site and how great they're doing. We think they could be doing better. If the goal is to lower expenses by not making people call in, you don't want them to have that experience. Based on my experience, if I ordered a product from Apple after that, I'd just pick up the telephone and say, "[This is] going to be easier for me."

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The other thing we found, and this one boggled our minds, is that the ability to buy is sometimes hidden. Very hidden ... so there might be 10 links on the page. The most important thing this site was trying to do was to get you to buy something. The "buy now" [button] might have had equal billing with the "go check out our corporate information" [button].

Sometimes words are used that don't mean what they say. There might be the word 'process.' People might think that means "process the order," when it is really a link to a discussion of how they process the order. We found many examples where the actual "click here to buy" [button] didn't say "click here to buy." You couldn't find out where to buy, and it was very frustrating.

Another thing we found, many sites -- especially the book and music sites -- were very dependent on a good search. We, in using Amazon, found many examples where we typed in the title of the book, nailed it, and a list of 50 would come up, with ours somewhere in the middle. Now, in the specific example that we printed in the report, Amazon search has gotten mysteriously better since the report was realized. I am sure that they were actually aware of the importance of that. The search is working better there now.

Any time that your site is driving people to buy products via a search capability, the search needs to be as good as it possibly can be.

Finally, in our top five, time and time again we found sites pointing people out of the buying process. I could already have been partially in the process of ordering. I might be in my third screen of the order, and there might be a link that says, "Click here to read the latest about the Goo-Goo Dolls." If I click that, who knows, if via serendipity or whatever, I ever get back to my order. We believe that every page should be designed, at least on the commerce end, with a specific purpose in mind. Either to find what they're looking for, or configure what they're looking for, or to make sure it is the right quantity or price, and all that information. We found sites aren't really designing pages with a specific focus in mind.

I don't think they're doing this on purpose. They have other things they want to promote. But don't do it right at the point where the customer has the option to click here to buy the thing they want to buy or click here to go somewhere else and read about something else.

Those would be in the top five. Some other little things: We found it was quite common to have the "buy" button very close to the "cancel" button, with perhaps 1/16th of an inch separating them. Given people's hard time getting the mouse exactly where you want it, you don't want the "buy" that close to the "cancel." Especially if you hit "cancel" and get something like, "Your order has been lost for perpetuity, please start over," it can be very frustrating.