I know nothing about cars. In fact, it’s fair to say I feel intimidated when I go to a garage, which is something I had to do today and it wasn’t pretty.

The mechanic knew his stuff but everytime he answered what was wrong, he stopped and looked expectantly at me. He didn’t notice that I didn’t know the next question and it was uncomfortable for me. Add on the fact that every person in the garage had about as much charisma and customer service technique of… well… most english shop assistants on a Saturday and you should get my drift of the situation.

When I demo web ’stuff’ to people, they sometimes say, “treat me as if I know nothing because when it comes to the web I’m just stupid”.

It doesn’t mean they are stupid, they just feel uncomfortable in the presence of someone else talking about something they may not have much confidence, or experience with.

That said, many websites do exactly the same as my mechanic. They leave dead-ends and questions un-answered. This tends to backfire with the visitor feeling they are doing something wrong. This may be because you are seen as the expert (you’re the one with a big clever website) and it may be their own lack of confidence or experience.

Now, there will always be a place for some websites to detract people; it’s an affective way of filtering customers but, how many people take that feeling of ‘feeling stupid’ with them when they give up and go somewhere else because they just can’t understand your website?