When you visit a website via a search engine then the search engine is making a promise that you expect the site to keep. If I put “red widget” into Google and click a link, I expect a page that features widgets, preferably of the color red.

What so often happens though is you do NOT get what you expected to find, especially when the company is PAYING for those clicks!

Seems several types of madness to pay for a visitor to click then send them to a generic homepage. At the very least set up Adwords to send the search query to your own search page. Anything is better than a default store front.

Then when you land on the store front you think “ok, perhaps they do sell these red widgets, just didn’t think to send me to the correct page” and you use their search. Only to find they DON’T sell red widgets. They just thought they would match that phrase and pay heavily to be the first result for it.

To me this is the web equivalent of the old three card monte game, where the naive Joe Public would be taken in by the scoundrel hustler. They tease you with what you are looking for, raise your hopes, then while you are distracted for a second the whole scene changes at dizzying speed, leaving you feeling duped, foolish and out of luck.

Showing you the prize then whipping it away before you have chance to grab it though is not the only three-card-monte game in town.

That high-speed shuffle these street card-sharks perform is also replicated in website user interfaces all over the internet. You think you have the navigation worked out only for the whole thing to change as you click through pages.

Sometimes it is a top navigation, sometimes right side, some times left, sometimes links are underlined, sometimes just bold … on and on.

Really, do some of these merchants set up sites just to inflict pain? Like the guy with the card skills, and I assume the running shoes, in the gambling scenario, none of this endears you to customers.

The cure of course is to get people to go through your site on a regular basis and tell you how it works for them. You are too close to see the problem. You know where everything is, and what should be there when you find it. Get a second and third opinion, before you lose your visitors trust and patience.

What other site anguish have you been put through this week? Please share in the comments …