The first experience is a demand to install Flash. No Flash, no entry. No entry, no activation. End of story. If you’re in business, as I am, you’re always under the gun to get 18 hours of work done in your 12-hour work day. Taking a half-hour out to figure out and bypass all the security settings set up by your Rent-A-Nerd folks can definitely send a middle-aged business owner into a fit of pique.

The fact that I am forced, as a user, to install Flash just to enter the site feels like the epitomy of arrogance. What happened to vendor respect for the users’ time? What if the user doesn’t want Flash cluttering up their system?  It’s practically an invitation to send customers to Sirius, where they can get into the site without any problem whatsoever.

Then there’s the unwanted advertising. After being forced to download Flash, then the unwanted software is used to waste the user’s time with the booming advertising voice announcing that “across the country, people are tuning in to a revolutionary new kind of radio.” Well, duh, if I’m at your site, I already KNOW about XM radio. It’s not something I’d stumble across by accident.

Then, at the next click, the user is ambushed by thumping disco music. Picture the horror on a user’s face when, multitasking at their desk and on the phone with their supervisor, the user innocently clicks, only to be found out by blaring muzack. More clicks, less credibility, more user frustration. It’s only after that point that the user can find links to the station line-up or to activate a radio.

Bottom line: Users want control over their user experience, and on the XM Radio site, web designers have taken away all control on the site. With all the research done on the topic of Flash intros, there’s no excuse for such a poor user experience in 2005.

What Amazon does is to keep me focused on my mission: buying the item of my choice. If I want to look at a picture of my item, it opens in another window. If I want to rate the item, it opens in another window. I fill in my information, then close the window and continue along my primary task path.

The beauty of the concept is in its simplicity. Less is more: Keep the distractions at bay. Give the user something to do at the end of each page. Keep the user on task.