A new study of Forrester Research shows that pure VoIP remains very complicated to grab sizeable share in the mass market. To date, only tech savvy customers are hooked on VoIP.

To be competitive, VoIP vendors like Skype, Google Talk, and Yahoo! Messenger must find ways to create user-friendly system to arrest this problem.

The main flaws that need to be addressed by vendors regarding consumer needs are value, navigation, presentation and trust/security. The navigation system presents a problem because the menu categories are inappropriately described, confusing consumers with unclear terms; Skype, for example, uses "contacts, tools, calls," but clicking on them is required to find out the hidden functionality.

There are no key-word based searches. A tool bar exists, but the tested VoIP applications show very poor integration of a powerful search engine, which makes it harder to cut through the tech jargon.

Icons, graphics, buttons, rollovers and navigation menus are not clearly symbolized, which leads to confusion when trying to discern whether a phone symbol represents voice or video calling, for example. Mainstream consumers worry about privacy and security policies because they are not displayed on all relevant pages.

Could this be the final piece to the puzzle of pure VoIP market domination?

Via Business Wire