Archive for December, 2007
published by Dan in Usability | Website Design
Note that when talking about usability studies user testing is different from focus groups. As mentioned before in user testing “users are observed while they are performing the tasks in order to determine where they have difficulty.” In focus groups users are asked for their opinion regarding their evaluation of the website design. Data gathered from focus groups are valuable but is not really the best method for usability studies. To determine usability of a website user testing is considered to be more apt.
So during what part of the web design process should user testing be conducted? The answer is - all throughout the process. One of the common mistakes of website designers is that they tend to complete the entire design and only do the testing after the design has been implemented. This is a mistake because waiting till the design is fully implemented will almost always reveal a whole slew of critical mistakes all at once. It is almost impossible to deal with all those mistakes, especially if many are structural in nature, so that you will end up having wasted much time since you will need to go back and redo most things, if not scrap everything all together. Because of this it is imperative that user testing be done in between each critical step of the web design process. This means conducting user test BEFORE implementation to get feedback on proposed design, conducting a user test on your competitions’ websites, showing prototypes of your design and testing them, and then a more in depth testing during beta phase.
published by Dan in Usability | Website Design
On my post on Signs that your Website Needs to be Redesigned I mentioned how running tests is the way to determine a website’s usability. Usability testing is of utmost importance if you wish to make sure that your website design has as few usability issues as possible.
There are numerous methods used to study usability although the most widely used, and perhaps the most important one, is user testing. As the name implies user testing involves the participation of users. In user testing a certain number of users are chosen to perform specific tasks. These users are observed while they are performing the tasks in order to determine where they have difficulty. After the test the users are usually asked for feedback so that they can point out which aspects of the design was most useful and pleasant and which aspects gave them the most difficulty and why.
The selection of users to participate in the user testing is critical in getting relevant results. When doing studies random selection is usually used to guard against bias. However, when doing usability studies you need to get users based on a certain criteria in order to ensure that the users are representative of your actual or target users. If you have a huge set of users that can participate in the testing then well and good, however even if you only have a handful that should be enough if these five users really are representative of the entire group.
published by Dan in Usability | Website Design
The last usability component left to discuss are errors. This component is of utmost importance in website design. Depending on the severity and number of errors an otherwise good web site design can be rendered useless or really irritating at the least. Of course, in most websites before a site is launched critical errors are caught and fixed. It is very rare (if it even ever happens) that a website is fully launched after beta testing without catching catastrophic errors. However, even though a website might be free of critical errors it can still have seemingly insignificant errors that still leads to decreased usability. Although it isn’t expected that a website be absolutely free of errors a usable website will have the least number of errors as possible. Furthermore, a good webmaster/web designer will immediately fix any errors, however small it may be, when it comes to his/her attention even after beta testing.
Errors in web design leads to decreased usability for several reasons:
- it hampers users from accomplishing their tasks
- it irritates users leading to decreased satisfaction
- it hampers search engine spiders from indexing all pages
Not all errors lead result in the same things but at least to one of the results listed above.
published by Dan in Usability | Website Design
Last post I discussed the importance of learnability and efficiency of use in web design. Today the component of usability that will be discussed is memorability and satisfaction.
Memorability - If learnability is how easy it is for first time users to understand how to navigate through the website and accomplish their task, memorability refers to how easy it is for returning users to remember how to navigate through the site and accomplish their task. Obviously, a website design that is complicated will make it harder for users to remember the exact steps to accomplish what they set out to do in the site. This is why efficiency and memorability also goes hand-in-hand. If the website design is more efficient there will be less steps for the users to go through to accomplish tasks and thus less things to remember, making it easier for them to reestablish proficiency even after a long period of not having visited the website.
Satisfaction - Customer satisfaction is of utmost importance if you want them to keep on coming back to the website. This is the most subjective part of usability. This means that while the graphics design of your website might please most users it will still turn off some. There is no pleasing everybody. However, your aim is not to please everyone but to please as many users as possible. What this means is investing in a good graphics design. Furthermore, the pleasant design should be coupled with the other components of usability to ensure that they will have a pleasant experience each time they visit the site.
published by Dan in Usability | Website Design
According to Jakob Nielsen and Ben Schneiderman, a usability expert and a computer scientist the components of usability are learnability, efficiency [of use], memorability, [few and non-catastrophic] errors, and [subjective] satisfaction.
Learnability - A website’s learnability is simply how easy users can understand the layout of the web site design and so be able to do whatever task they have set out to do when they visit the website on their first time. A website that has good usability in terms of learnability has an intuitive design so that the majority of its users will be able to find what they need easily. For example, a a site is learnable if a user that wants to make a purchase easily see the buy button and is able to fill out necessary field easily. A website that is not that learnable will result in the user having to look around for the way to make a purchase spending much time doing this or in the end deciding not to make the purchase.
Efficiency - A website design is efficient if users are able to perform their tasks quickly. Learnability and efficiency goes hand-in-hand. Learnability is how fast users can understand and learn your website’s structure so they can navigate around the website easily while efficiency is the number of steps a user must take in order to get to their goals. Let us use the example of buying to further illustrate what efficiency of use is. Two website’s can both be equally learnable if the main page has a similar interface with the buy button placed in a prominent area, making it easy to make a purchase. However, efficiency can still differ if one site only take one or two steps to actually finish making the purchase while the other site takes multiple steps (such as filling out endless forms) in order to finish the task. Of course, the more efficient a site is the better the design is since it will eat up less of the users’ time.
published by Dan in Usability | Website Design
As I have written again and again in this blog, usability is essential to a good website design. A pretty looking site that has plenty of usability problem might initially attract users but in the end will not really retain any users. The reason for this is simple. If a website is not usable people will simply leave the website and look for another resource wherein they will be able to navigate around more easily and find the information they need. The internet has tons of website about every kind of topic imaginable and internet users know this. What this means is that websites do not have a captive audience. In order to keep visitors you need to capture their attention and a website with usability issues simply won’t be able to do that.
In order to address usability issues in ones website though the web designer needs to realise that there are five basic components of usability that should be looked into - learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction. Each of the five components need to be addresses in order for the website design to be truly usable. If one of the five components has a problem a website may still be usable but will not have full impact of an otherwise fully optimised site. What this means is that some visitors might not return or perform the desired actions (i.e. making a purchase or clicking on an Ad).
On my next posts I will be discussing each of the five components and how overall usability can be improved.
published by Dan in Usability | Website Design
If your website is suffering from lots of usability issues then it is a signal for you to consider a site redesign. By the way, it doesn’t always have to be a lot of usability issues. Even a few but critical or glaring usability issues should be enough to make you consider going for a new or at least revised website design.
If you do not know much about website design then you might fall into thinking that your website doesn’t have usability issues, especially if it is really pretty look at. However, just because a website looks good to the eye initially doesn’t automatically mean that it is that functional. So how do you know if your website’s design is not that functional?
The best way to determine your website’s overall usability is to run various tests on it with the help of your actual users. You need to gather data and analyse them in order to determine which parts of your website’s design is good in terms of usability and which ones need working on. You don’t really need to test a large group of users but a small group representative of most users that actually visit your website would be good enough. However, if you can gather real time data from more users then the better. To know what data to gather and how to analyse them though you will need the help of web design consultants that are usability experts.
Next time I will discuss in further detail the important components of usability that should be taken into account in your web page design.
published by Dan in Website Design | Website Standards
Last post I mentioned two signs that your website needs to be redesigned - an outdated look and a design that hurts your site’s SEO. Today I’ll be discussing one more signs - non-adherence to web design standards.
As I have mentioned several times in previous posts you can easily check whether your website adheres to the current web design standards by using the W3C markup validation service. Unless your web designer has come up with a revolutionary web design that makes your website’s usability a whole lot easier and more intuitive then it is usually best to stick with a web design that conforms with the present standards. By conforming to current W3C standards you can be sure that your website will be readable or viewable using almost any browser. This means that more people will be able to access your site, which we know is always a good thing.
If your current website has too many errors when you try to validate it it is time to check with a web design firm to find out what they can do for you. To find a good web designer a good start will be to take a look at their website and see if THEIR site adheres to current standards. You should see a W3C chicklet somewhere on their web page (it is located on the bottom right of this page) to show that the page passed validation. If you can’t find any then just go back to the W3C markup validation service and use it to check the page’s validity. If a web design company cannot create a page that adheres to W3C’s standards then how can they make a better page for you? In the end you are better of hiring a professional web designer that takes into account not only the look but also the cleanliness of their code.
published by Dan in SEO | Website Design
An outdated look - If your site looks like it has been left behind then, whether your site is performing well or not, it is time to overhaul your site’s design. If your website is really old (from the 90s) then even though it was based on good website design standards then you need give it a facelift at the very least. Ageing is good for your website in terms of SEO but can hurt your reputation especially if your visitors are more modern. There is no need for your site to look like a dinosaur. Get rid of the outdated look and ask a graphics design team to come up with a newer version of your old look. If your company has a specific feel though make sure that the transition to your site’s new look retains the company’s feel so as to not alienate your old visitors. The outdated look is also usually a sign that your site is not really optimised. This would also be the perfect time to make sure that your site is optimised for search engines.
Search engine optimisation - Speaking of optimisation, even if your site does not look outdated one of the clear signs that your website needs to be redesigned is if the current design is based on poor SEO practices. Ask an SEO consultant whether your website’s design is hurting your site’s performance with search engines because you might be surprised that it does. Certain design elements hinder spiders from crawling pages and you want to make sure that the issue is addressed. You also want to make sure that all important content are indexed so that if your site’s design simply isn’t search friendly you might need a redesign or at least have an SEO consultant do “background” work for you, leaving the graphics intact but the site optimised.
published by Dan in Website Design
The answer to this question is not always a clear one. In some cases when the current website looks obviously horrible then the answer is a clear yes. However, there are lots of websites out there that do need to consider a website redesign that look good enough. In cases like these there are times when the website redesign entails a major overhaul while there are instances when only minor changes are needed. So how do you know if it is time to redesign your website?
First of all if there are glaring errors on the site and your visitors have been encountering problems then for sure you need a website redesign. If there aren’t any big problems though you should still take the next step and have your website evaluated by a web design company. Make sure that the web design company that assesses your website for you takes into consideration not only the graphic design of your site but also your website’s performance in terms of SEO. This means that you should hire a web design firm that also offers SEO services. After initial assessment you should be given a detailed explanation on what parts of the (if not the entire) site needs to be tweaked and the following questions should be answered:
- Does your site need a complete overhaul? If the answer is yes ask them to explain why.
- Does my site need a facelift or a tune up? By facelift I mean a change in the graphic design for cosmetic purposes and by tune up I mean changes that will affect search engine optimisation and overall usability.
- What are the proposed changes?
- How will it benefit my site?
The answers to these questions aren’t clear cut and will depend on your site’s needs. If you are satisfied with the answer then trust the web designer and go ahead with the planned changes. If not then ask for a second opinion. To help guide you though I will give a short list of signs that your website does need a redesign on my next post.
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