StumbleUpon Has Severe Usability Flaws

October 5, 2007 | Tags for this entry:

So, after hearing so much about it for more than a year now, I finally signed up for a StumbleUpon account. I haven’t really explored all that it has to offer, but I’m sure it’ll be as exciting as everyone says it is.

Looking forward to that.

In the meantime, I’m busy trying to find all of the usual buttons and features that one would expect to find on any website… But I CAN’T. It seems like they want to force the user to behave the way they want us to. Here are a few of my brief observations regarding how poor the usability is on StumbleUpon’s site:

  • If logging out is something users might want to do, they’re forced go to homepage and select “login” to get to the “logout” button. Shouldn’t this be on the ‘Preferences > Personal Information’ page?
  • But, If you’re using the toolbar and attempt to log out from the site, forget it! You have to log out using the toolbar.
  • Forced to download the Firefox toolbar to be able to change password. I signed up on Safari, so I was lost for a LONG time.
  • Toolbar offers to ‘enhance your browsing’ and the alert box disables the ‘close’ button… User is forced to click the tiny ‘No Thanks’ button at the bottom.
  • Can’t add friends easily. User is forced to migrate address books from other services as only option to add friends.
  • For some unknown reason they use dropdown menus for the birth date. Glad I wasn’t born any earlier, I’d still be scrolling.
  • What the heck is this? I have to rollover to find out what these icons mean…
    Stumble Message Icon

That’s all that I’ve noticed so far.

Now, excuse me while I go stumble this posting.

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Comments

10 Comments

  1. Zak writes:
    October 6th, 2007 at 10:54 am

    I see what you’re saying and from a usability stand point, I guess it never bothered me so much since I originally used it as a bookmarking tool, now I use it as traffic bringer.

    And I’m sure your analytics will reflect that 🙂

  2. Ryan writes:
    October 6th, 2007 at 11:48 am

    Lmao, I found you with stumble upon. Hypocrite.

    doooowwwwwnnnn ranked. kthnx.

  3. Hai writes:
    November 20th, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    Omg, you had to rollover?
    …

  4. Z writes:
    November 23rd, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    Careful kids… the intrawebs is serious business.

  5. beka writes:
    December 28th, 2007 at 6:33 pm

    I agree that their website is a usability nightmare. Forcing your users to use the toolbar to do things is very nearly infuriating. I guess there is some sort of “ooh whee!” factor involved here that some developer somewhere is getting his jollies on.

    I love StumbleUpon’s service but their website drives me nuts.

  6. ludmilla writes:
    April 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 am

    how the hell do you logout of stumbleupon adn login as a different user? fuck sake!

  7. sandrar writes:
    September 10th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. 🙂 Cheers! Sandra. R.

  8. HahahaComedy writes:
    January 14th, 2010 at 12:57 am

    Seriously, I don’t understand why I get logged in as a different user every time I visit the site.

  9. SEOXY writes:
    April 14th, 2012 at 1:12 am

    Since 2007 there have been comments about this serious flaw.
    They don’t care and it is clearly working for them.
    I think it sucks and is stupid and will recommend my readers to NOT use it. I mean, what kind of SEO value does it REALLY offer anyway?

  10. Abhinandan writes:
    May 28th, 2012 at 8:41 pm

    After a lot of frustration I found out ..
    http://abhinandanmk.blogspot.i...on-in.html