If it’s not immediately obvious that your app works, it’s broken. Anything that your customers can’t figure out how to do doesn’t work.

I’ve known this for a while, but when you hang out with web developers and college students (I’m in college), it’s easy to forget.

Here is what I do now, what most people will do in 5-10 years, and what you probably do now too:

Have something you want
Try to figure out how to do it
If you can’t figure it out, but it’s important, keep trying, press buttons
If you can’t figure it out, and it’s important, use google
Do it

Here is what most people, especially people over 40, do now:

Have something you want
Try to figure out how to do it
If it doesn’t work, try again 1 time doing the same thing
If you can’t figure it out, quit

This was emphasized for me in a tech support call today where a customer could not log in. She was typing her e-mail address and entering her password, but it wasn’t working. I sent her a password reset e-mail, she followed the link, reset her password, and went home happy.

Of course, there is a large piece of text just underneath the password entry box in the app that says “Forgot your password? Click here to reset it”. But the customer didn’t forget her password, as far as she knew, it just wasn’t working.

Of course, she had forgotten her password or perhaps typed it in badly twice when she was signing up. But, since there was no button that said “Password doesn’t work? Click here” the app didn’t work for her. It was broken.

While this is an extreme example, what worries me is the vast number of people who don’t call tech support, but have similar problems. If your app isn’t immediately obvious, you are losing customers.