Usability and the Phone Number
I came across my old address book recently. As I looked through it, I found the expected addresses and phone numbers of friends and family. However, I was surprised at the number of entries I had collected for businesses. There were phone numbers for take-out pizza, Chinese food, pharmacies, car dealerships, doctors, dentists, optometrists, schools and a few of favorite retail stores. .
I realized that the closest thing I have to an address book now is my Outlook contact list. The necessity to organize the names and addresses of businesses is a thing of the past. Why keep track of something on paper when it is easier to just look it up using a search engine?
This acknowledgement brings us to the topic of usability and the phone number. I decided to see how easy it was to get phone numbers for some of the businesses listed above by using a basic Google search. For the most part, the results were pleasing. The address and phone number for the pizza, Chinese food, dentist, and retail stores all came up in the search results. It wasn’t even necessary to click a link. The pharmacy returned the address only, but I quickly found the phone number when I clicked on a directory listing. Ironically, none of the search results were from the actual business’ web site. Rather, the results were from an online directory service. Kudos to Google and other directory/map/search businesses that have made this possible.
The search for my doctor, optometrist, and car dealership was another story. Each tells a different story and each scenario uncovers a different usability lesson. I’ll devote the next 3 blogs to share my findings. Meanwhile, take a look at some screen prints that I captured to illustrate the positive results.
The search for my dentist returned not only the address and phone number, but a map.
I found the phone number for the local Round Table Pizza in seconds.
