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Reviewer: Will Wallace

This is a must-read for anyone working with any Web site, from a personal site, to a multinational enterprise site. If you are putting in the time and energy to create a site, you certainly want people to visit it more than once. This book provides excellent advice for helping visitors handle any glitches, or crisis points, they encounter. Crisis points occur when things go wrong, and a visitor is presented with an error message, given inaccurate search results, or notified that the item they want is out-of-stock. When faced with a crisis point, visitors may become frustrated and leave the site, or they may get back on track, and end up having a satisfying experience. Defensive design, done properly, will help the visitor overcome the crisis. No matter how carefully a site is designed and implemented, visitors will run into problems. It is best to plan for these contingencies up front. According to the authors, to help visitors get back on track, you need to pay attention to the site's error messaging, graphic design, programming, instructive text, information architecture, and customer service. Chapter 1 provides an overview of defensive design, and what makes it effective. Developers have to be flexible; not every guideline will be appropriate for every site. Think of the visitors to your site as real people, not just another hit. What would you tell your mother if she ran into a problem on your site__?__ Certainly not just "Error 404 Page Not Found." Chapters 2 through 9 are the heart of the book, containing 40 guidelines to help make recovery from a crisis easier for the people who visit your site. One of the main points presented is the importance of making sure that the visitor knows when a problem occurs, and knows what the problem is, and of providing them with a way to get back on track. Be consistent in how you present the information: don't make the visitor be a detective trying to determine what the problem is and how to get out of it. When you are working with forms, make sure you clearly identify the problem on the form near the location of the problem. It is easier to make the visitor do the work, and just list the errors on a page, and have them click back to the form to make the corrections. But will they remember the laundry list of errors they need to fix__?__ Do you add insult to injury by making the person reenter all of the data when they go back to fix the errors__?__ One way to avoid a potential problem before it happens is to remove the reset buttons from forms; they cause more problems than they solve. If a visitor needs to make extensive changes to a form, they can either reload the page, or type over the old data. Guideline 16 deals with the ubiquitous "Error 404 Page Not Found." Instead of using the default page loaded on the server, create a customized page to help your visitors get back on track. Include things like a list of common problems leading a visitor to the page, a link to the home page, and an email link so visitors can report the problem. But be sure the email goes to an account that is checked frequently, and get back to the visitor when the issue is resolved. Guideline 18 emphasizes the need to use the ALT attribute for images. While this will make your site more accessible, it can also help improve your ranking with search engines. Search engines can't access text contained in an image, so putting text in the ALT attribute of the IMG tag gives them the information they need. Providing tips, and even an email, can help visitors solve login problems; this is the advice of guideline 25. At least one site automatically sends an email to the registered address for the account after a visitor fails to log in three consecutive times. This proactive approach keeps visitors happy, and encourages repeat visits. Chapter 10 is a contingency design test, to help you evaluate your site or any other site. The test will help you identify weak spots, so they can be addressed. The authors recommend that you also have someone less familiar with the site run the test, too. Someone new can provide a fresh perspective, and can find things you have missed. This book is a must-have on the bookshelf of any serious Web developer. It is an easy read, and provides you with a lot to think about, and maybe even a lot to do, to improve each site you are responsible for. The book closes with a discussion about the long-term commitment required to tackle each new crisis point as it appears, and a very comprehensive index. Online Computing Reviews Service