Make people feel at home

How welcome do your users feel when using your product for the first time? How do you welcome them? Do you go out of your way to make people using your product feel comfortable and welcomed?

Most of the 37signals products uses the blank slate pattern to help get people started. In their Highrise web application, they even have a full “Welcome” tab in the menu dedicated to welcoming the first-time user. Once you feel beyond the welcome step, you can choose not to see the tab anymore.

At nouri.sh, a series of inline help boxes teaches you to use the application. At any time, you can choose to hide a help box if you feel like you’ve learned enough from it.

Flickr.com has had a long lasting tradition about greeting you in a new language every time you log in. One time, it will say ‘Ahoy ’, another it will say ‘Bangawoyo ’ with the subtitle “Now you know how to greet people in Korean!”. Such personalized fun messages makes the user enjoy himself and feel at home – and thus more forgiving, as Attractive things work better.

Good websites, as with good product design in general, make it easy to find your way around: leaving no doubt as to which button to click or handle to turn.