Make sure your websites are easy to use
This article appeared in May 2005 editions of the Dominion Post, Christchurch Press and Waikato Times newspapers.
A recent 6000-person US study found that on average users wasted more than five hours a week frittering time away on their computers: waiting for programs to run, or help to arrive, or double checking print outs for accuracy and formatting.
It is little wonder that a 2002 study conducted in England revealed that 70 per cent of people admitted to shouting, swearing at, or generally acting violently towards their computer.
Aren't computers supposed to make our lives easier and less stressful?
Unfortunately, using the Internet can be just as frustrating and time consuming. No-one wants to have to waste their precious time fighting with websites. While the web has come a long way in the past five years, there is still a frustrating gap between our expectations and the experience of using a typical website.
In 2004 our company, Optimal Usability, evaluated more than 120 New Zealand websites and found that most were still making some very basic mistakes. Website visitors found it difficult to locate information, and when they could find it the information was not always useful.
Here are our top three recommendations for creating a useful and easy-to-use website:
- Be consistent. Many people expect web design elements to behave in a certain way when they visit a new site because that's how things usually work. Take advantage of these conventions. Link to the home page in the upper left corner of each page. If you have search functionality, then put a search box at the top of every page. Change the colour of visited links. Be internally consistent with how navigation mechanisms are designed, and information, links, buttons and other visual elements are displayed.
- Provide concise, goal-driven content. Most people will visit your website for a reason, they want to find information. Present the most important information first, and ensure that it is concise and easy to understand. Ensure that the important things are more visually prominent and things that are related logically are also related visually. Group information into manageable sizes for reading on-screen and use meaningful subheadings, bulleted lists and bold keywords. Don't hide information deep in the site - reveal it at the earliest available opportunity. Most users tend to scan web pages, so ensure that links are descriptive, and make sense even when read outside the context of the rest of the page.
- Design for way-finding. People often become disorientated when they move throughout a website. At every page it should be obvious to users where they are, where they can go and where they've been. Visual cues such as colours, typography, icons and labels help users to understand their location and navigate though the website. The user's current location should be highlighted in the navigation bars. Avoid creating links to the current page as our studies have shown that up to 8% of all clicks on pages were wasted, because confused users were inadvertently clicking links that reloaded the page that they were already on.
Increased competition on the Internet will lead to increased requirements for usability: users simply will not use sites that are not easy to use. The up side is that easy-to-use websites result in increased use, more efficient use and greater user satisfaction.
Tell us what you think about this article. You can get in touch with us at feedback@optimalusability.com.
