Dear Yahoo – what a difference an ‘m’ can make

Posted in: Design & user experience Site re-launch Site review on August 5, 2009 10:55 am |

Just a quick observation on the recent Yahoo home page redesign. I have been trying it out since it launched and the one thing I hate more than anything has nothing to do with the design but everything to do with the URL. When you go to the site it is no longer www.yahoo.com but instead m.www.yahoo.com. The addition of that ‘m’ to the URL drives me crazy and keeps me away from the site because it screws me up every time I go to their site and then type in any other url. So this is one of those cases where breaking user expectation creates a negative experience that overrules everything about the design and experience to the point where people will start to avoid your site over something as small as a single letter.