USEworthy Spring 2004
The monthly Newsletter from The Usability Company
Welcome to the spring edition of USEworthy. In this
issue, we focus on e-commerce and public sector websites. The
Argos website, said to be one of the three most visited sites in
the UK, undergoes some usability scrutiny by Arlene Kline,
Usability and Accessibility Specialist at The Usability Company.
Arlene conducted a usability assessment of the Argos website for
Internet World magazine Jan-Feb 2004 issue. The Usability Company
will be conducting a website usability assessment each month for
Internet World magazine. If you would like The Usability Company
to assess how well your website shapes up, please drop the editor
of Internet World a line at: janine.milne@fastnet.co.uk
Lisa Halabi, Usability and Accessibility Specialist at The
Usability Company provides an assessment of the five most common
e-commerce web usability mistakes that she encounters through
testing in our usability labs on a wide range of e-commerce sites
across various sectors.
In the Rules of Attraction article, which first appeared in
Internet World Jan-Feb 2004 edition, Paul Blunden, CEO of The
Usability Company discusses the business case for usability,
especially the issue of Return on Investment. The article explains
how poor design equals poor sales suggesting that the quickest
ways to double the amount of money you get from your website is to
either increase the number of visitors by 100% - or double the
amount they spend once they're there. The article suggests that
the latter is easier and cheaper and will only cost around 10% of
the investment the former would.
These comments are further supported by Joe Coughlin from
Victor Chandler and Russell Gould from Charcol Online both long
term clients of The Usability Company. According to Russel Gould,
Head of eCommerce at Charcol Online, 'Customers were getting
kicked back a lot by things we wouldn't have seen without
(usability) testing. But a few quick changes resulted in happier
customers, a drop in calls to the call centre, and almost
immediate hikes in conversion rates…." This article is a
must read for clients or those who are considering commissioning
some usability work as it illustrates the benefits of usability
from the clients' perspective.
In addition, the Guardian article "Is your website friend
or foe?" Catriona Campbell, Chairman of The Usability Company
comments on the usability issues facing public sector websites.
The article discusses the general state of public sector websites
and the usability challenges they are facing.
The Usability Company News
The Usability Company is pleased to announce that
we recently celebrated our 3rd Birthday, which took place at
Century Members bar Thursday March 11. Thank you to the staff,
clients and suppliers who attended the party and made it such a
great success!
There was much cause for celebration at The Usability Company
this past quarter as we opened our new Edinburgh office! The
Edinburgh office was opened in February this year in order to
fully explore the opportunities Scotland's growing economy
presents. Scotland is a particularly attractive location to The
Usability Company due to its very strong IT and financial services
industries and, of course, it is the homeland of our founder!
The Usability Company has tied up with the New Media Age (NMA)
Effectiveness Awards, the biggest prize in new media! Usability
will be one of the key tests for would-be NMA Effectiveness Awards
winners this year, following an accord between The Usability
Company and NMA. The Awards ceremony, which celebrates the best of
interactive media for 2004, takes place in May. The Usability
Company will assess all the shortlisted entries for the Awards in
appropriate categories for usability and the findings will be
included in the judging process. Furthermore, Catriona Campbell
has been asked back to resume her place on the judging panel for
the NMA Awards again this year!
The Usability Company welcomes Toby Turner to our sales team as
Senior Account Manager. Toby comes to us from Hemscott Group Plc
where he worked as an Online Investor Relations consultant for
three years. Toby is now working in The Usability Company's
corporate accounts department.
And Finally...
Catriona Campbell was invited to speak to some Brighton University
PHD students alongside Guy Winter, Head of HCI at the BBC, January
12 2004. The event focused on iTV and Catriona gave a presentation
on "Designing usable and engaging interactivity".
Marty Carroll, Head of Usability Practice, was asked to speak
at the Comino conference in January. The conference, which is
specifically for local government took place this January in
Hinckley, Leicester where Marty spoke about and demonstrated the
major usability issues concerning local government websites.
Marty was also one of the guest speakers at the eConsultancy/NetImperative
Web Analytics seminar March 11, 2004. Other guest speakers
included Jim Sterne and Matthew Tod. To learn more about the
seminar and download the presentations please visit the
e-Consultancy website.
This April, Catriona Campbell will be speaking at the
International Classified Media Association, ICMA General Meeting
at The Hague, Netherlands. ICMA represents market-leading
publishing companies within the classified media from 38 countries
worldwide. Catriona will be speaking and chairing the debate on
who the target audience is for classified media and what they want
from the online service offerings provided by publishing
companies. For more information on this event, please go to the
ICMA website.
Five common e-commerce web usability mistakes
Lisa Halabi, Usability Specialist, The
Usability Company
It's amazing how often the same design mistakes appear on
different websites. Testing in our usability laboratories enables
us to critique and study a wide range of websites with end users
running through a series of tasks that they might perform on the
site in the real world. Alarmingly, we often see the same issues
occur with regular frequency on a number of sites. The sectors
might be different, from banking and insurance to gaming and
entertainment, but the mistakes stay the same. These mistakes tend
to frustrate and annoy your customers to the extent that they
can't complete the tasks that they came on the site to accomplish
and may go elsewhere. Below we've put together a list of some of
the five common usability mistakes we see. Have a look and ask
yourself, how does your site compare?
1) Not telling people in advance about information required
to complete a process.
Many of you may have experienced the frustration of getting to
the end of a lengthy online process only to find that you're
missing a piece of vital information. The sheer irritation of
having spent an hour completing your online mortgage application
only to find you need your previous employers post code. "If
only I was told I would need this in advance" you wail. A
sure fire way to waste your customer's time and send them packing
elsewhere. Best to tell them in advance about any necessary
information they will need to have to hand. Failing that, allow
them to save the session for later.
2) Forcing people to register with your site.
Registration is often seen as a barrier to users unless there
is a clear reason for it. Why? Because it forces your users to
work and who wants to do that unless you really have to? Imagine a
friend has sent you a link to an interesting news article. You
click on it only to discover you must register with the site
first. There's a good chance you simply won't bother. So if it
isn't strictly necessary to do so, consider whether you are
prepared to loose a significant proportion of visitors before you
force them to register with your site. In many instances removing
this barrier is advantageous to both you and them.
3) Hiding prices.
When people visit your website, they will want to find out the
necessary information to enable them to make a decision about a
product or service. For many e-commerce sites, one of the most
important aspects is naturally the cost. Yet, during usability
testing sessions, we often observe people unable to find prices on
sites because they have been hidden away. "All I want is
the price! Where is it?" Holiday websites are often
notoriously bad at this. Most people would rather see the prices
displayed alongside the descriptions to which they relate rather
than on a cryptic table hidden away somewhere. Being clear and
upfront about prices is good for your customers because it means
that they are not required to hunt them down. Furthermore, this
transparency can often increase the customer's trust in your
website
4) Not writing for the web.
Writing for the web is not the same as writing for any other
medium. It is not okay to take printed matter and place it on your
website mostly because it will be too lengthy. Users do not like
to read information online and presenting them with wall-to-wall
text shows a lack of understanding of how people read online. So
how do they read online? In essence, they don't. Eye tracking
studies have shown that people don't read screens of text; instead
they scan, stopping only to look at things that look interesting
or relevant to them. So the key is to make information as short
and concise as possible and to enhance "scanability" by
using lists and bullet points. Less is definitely more in this
instance, but make sure your content is good.
5) Search engines that don't work.
The 'hunter gathers' of the web world know exactly what they're
looking for and will often use the search facility to help them
find it quicker than browsing. If people don't get good search
results and if they can't find what they're looking for after a
couple of attempts, there's a strong chance they will leave your
site and try their luck on your competitors. It therefore makes
good business sense to help your customers find what they're
looking for. You need to ensure your Search is up to the task for
natural queries and that results are helpful and informative.
Google is a really good example, it anticipates that people make
spelling mistakes and goes the extra mile by providing assistance
when you do. Indeed, some people have even started to use Google
as an alternative dictionary to find the correct spelling of words
they don't know!
We
look at how well the Argos website www.argos.co.uk shapes up in
the usability stakes,
Arlene Kline, Usability Specialist, The Usability Company
First published in Internet World Magazine Jan-Feb 2004
GOOD POINTS
- The six methods available to find products
They accommodate those users who know exactly what they want
('Search'), those users who already know the product's Argos catalogue
number ('Quick Order'), those who have a rough idea of what they would
like (The category lists and 'A-Z Index') and those who require help in
choosing a gift ('QuickFind-It Gift' and others). The 'Quick Order'
feature has the added advantage of allowing users to enter up to ten
catalogue numbers at once for a quick multi-purchase option.
Only the top results from each relevant category are displayed
initially, with the option of viewing the full set of results. This
makes the return of the results page quicker and avoids overloading
users with too much information at once.
- The variety of ways for customers to pay for and receive their
goods
This integration of multiple shopping channels assists the usability
of the online shopping experience by exploiting offline knowledge and
experience that users would have gained through their dealings with
Argos in the physical world.
LET DOWNS
- The high-level product information pages
The information provided in the list is scant. Ideally, users should
be provided with sufficient information to make an informed decision.
This information is not available until a product is selected from the
list and the detailed product information page appears.
- The quality and clarity of product photographs
Users typically want to simulate having a 'closeinspection' of the
product to satisfy themselves of the material's quality. More views of
the products and close-ups of details would be useful.
Users do not know whether a product is in stock or not until the
product has been added to the trolley. It could be frustrating to find a
product out of stock after going to the effort of locating it. Ideally,
the availability of the stock would be displayed when the detailed
product information page is viewed.
OVERALL
This site is a good example of how good information architecture can
make it simple to present a vast product range. The pages are simply
laid out, yet provide users with enough information and related links to
investigate further. The categories are clear and the labelling is
appropriate. Good use has been made of the alt tags to enhance the
clarity of links and images. Overall, this is a tightly-knit site that
sits very well with the Argos brand - not overly elaborate, but with
plenty of options to satisfy most users' needs.
Would you like The Usability Company to assess how well your website
shapes up? Then please drop the editor of Internet World a line at: janine.milne@fastnet.co.uk
Is your Website Friend or Foe?
Websites are put to the test every time someone visits them, but
the software used to record the popularity of a government site does not
assess how easy it is to use.
Sally Whittle explains why.
This article appeared in The
Guardian, Wednesday February 25, 2004 and The Guardian online
e-Public section.
The chief executive wants to know how the website is doing. So you
ask the IT department to pull up the server records. They show that hits
are growing, page impressions are up, and the search engine has been
getting lots of use. Great, right? Before you pass those numbers on,
think again.
The search engine's popularity could be a sign that users can't find
the information they're looking for. High page impressions may suggest
they're lost, testing link after link. You don't know because your
organisation, like many others in the public sector, never asked people
whether your website is easy to use. "The website you have is
probably a miserable failure," says Jakob Nielsen, principal of the
usability consulting firm, Nielsen Norman Group. Nielsen has spent the
past decade crusading against complicated menus, badly designed pages
and poorly worded home pages. He says that 80% of public sector websites
fail the usability test, meaning that the average user can't find and
use information quickly and easily.
Usability is a particular issue in the public sector, in which
websites need to be accessed by the whole community: the elderly, people
with low literacy levels and those with visual or other disabilities.
Managers in the public sector have a responsibility to ensure that
everyone in the community can access online services, says Mark Gardner,
website manager at Birmingham city council. "The site is paid for
by its users and we have to be able to justify their investment. That
means usability has to take priority over design."
When Birmingham redesigned its website two years ago, improving
usability was a top priority. The council worked with a specialist
market researcher to conduct focus groups, asking the community what it
thought of the new site. "We got a lot of feedback, particularly on
the menu and the terminology we used," says Gardner. "We used
that to create a new menu based on eight categories of content that
people can easily understand."
The focus group is an essential component of user-centred design,
which is the holy grail of website usability. "The idea is to build
your website around what users want and how they think, rather than how
your council is structured," explains Catriona Campbell, managing
director of The Usability Company. "When I visit the council's
website, I don't know which council department I want to contact. I just
want to know when the rubbish is collected on my road."
The first step in improving website usability is to think about how
information is put together on the site - something the experts call
information architecture. "Does one page follow another in a
logical order," asks Campbell. "When I click on a link, do I
have an idea of where I'm going to end up?" One way organisations
can improve information architecture is to write the headings of web
pages (or groups of pages) onto pieces of paper, and ask users to
organise them into areas they think are related. "This is a really
simple and remarkably effective way to devise a menu structure,"
Campbell says. Where users don't agree on where a page goes, information
can be duplicated or a link created between the two sections.
Once you have a basic structure in place, Campbell advises creating a
paper prototype of a typical web page, and again testing the site's
design with users. Once this is done, create a prototype website using
basic hypertext mark-up language. It might seem like a lot of hassle,
but Campbell points out that early user testing often works out cheaper
in the long run.
"It's a lot cheaper to move a search button on a paper prototype
than it is to move a button on a fully-functioning website," she
says. Early and frequent testing can offer warnings on potential
problems. When Medway council redesigned its website last year, the
three months spent on user testing helped reduce overall development
time by half, according to website manager Sean Hale. "It was
absolutely worth it because it opened our eyes to issues that we would
never have considered ourselves, because we know the site and the
information inside out."
The council initially videotaped a series of users trying to
accomplish specific tasks on the existing website, and used the results
to create a priority list for the new site. The usability team then
returned to the users at every stage of development, while a specific
disability working group considered how well the site worked for people
relying on text-to-speech web browsers and other assisted technology.
However, user testing can present managers with problems. "You'll
always get people who say everything is rubbish.
People contradict themselves all the time and nothing is ever going
to please everyone," says Hale. The best advice is to take the
general point of view, unless an individual points out an issue that you
are obliged to take note of, such as access for people with specific
disabilities. If your website is up and running, it's still possible to
dramatically improve usability with a few inexpensive and simple
changes. For example, traffic monitoring software can reveal what pages
on a website are being visited, and where visitors leave a site. This
can reveal services that aren't being used or particular stages in a
process where users become confused or lost.
The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta)
is responsible for awarding grants to innovative community projects from
National Lottery funds. However, traffic analysis showed that visitors
were often leaving the site without viewing information on how to apply
for grants. "We didn't know we'd hidden it, but it was apparent
people couldn't find the information," says Maria Stark, Nesta's
web manager. Simply moving this information further up a menu structure,
or providing a link from the home page is often enough to improve
usability. Traffic analysis tools are widely used, but it requires a
degree of skill to interpret these results, says Nielsen. A page might
be unused because it is hidden, but it's also possible that people don't
need that service.
Alternatively, visitors may end up misinformed by content they have
found that is poorly written. In the end, Nielsen says, user group
testing is the only way to really be sure your website passes the
usability test. "There's a tendency to prefer nice, clinical data
to the messy process of sitting down with real users," he says.
"But remember: they don't smell, and they won't bite. Who knows?
They might even be nice about your website."
Rules of attraction
Gary Flood
First published in Internet World
So your new website is fast, slick, got loads of content, and you can
buy all your company's goods online off it over a highly secure link.
Time to sit back and count the millions as customers stream to your
virtual shop front, right?
Alas, you may have to postpone the champagne cork popping just a
little longer, because the most vital factor in whether a website is
actually used may have been overlooked. How sure are you that your shiny
new e-commerce zone is actually usable by the people you want to buy
from it? Unless you can answer 'because we asked them,' you may be in
trouble, according to a growing chorus of experts (and converts) who say
that usability is still a major downfall of UK.com.
For example, in June, design consultancy Salmon delivered a system
for Argos that can find any product from the firm's entire 12,000-item
catalogue in three clicks.
The fact that Argos - which claims to be one of the three most
popular websites in the UK - felt the need to do this should tell you
something about the state of usability. The best websites are the ones
that don't just put up the best-looking template their web design agency
came up with. Instead, they either start from scratch with a so-called
user-centred design approach, or only work with those designers who
understand wonderful new things called information architecture. Or they
take the time and trouble to actually field-test their web shops with
real punters, who may find your stellar design doesn't actually help
them to do what they clicked on your site to do - research or buy a
product.
Don't believe you need to worry? Dutch e-commerce consultancy
Fredhopper this year analysed 500,000 consumer website visits. It found
less than 10% of visitors to retail websites make a purchase, a
worryingly high 20% to 30% of potential customers explore no further
than the home page, and 65% of visitors leave after viewing only one or
two pages. So why are we bothering?
Similarly, UK start-up website performance evaluation specialist
SciVisum claims its equivalent research found 81% of large UK companies
rely on customer complaints to improve website services. (Think of how
comfortable you'd be with that as your main research process for product
improvement.) Put this and other such data together and you soon start
to see a disturbing pattern: the missing link in far too many websites
may be the customer you're trying to reach and retain.
'If you haven't done user testing, frankly I don't think you should
be on the web selling things,' is the take-no-prisoners viewpoint of one
of the undisputed pioneers of usability thinking, Jakob Nielsen,
principal of the Nielsen Norman Group.
Nielsen - and many others - say they're not banging on about
usability just for pure aesthetic reasons. Poor design equals poor
sales. If design is bad, it will put users off too easily, or it won't
allow them to navigate or cruise the site the way they want to, and that
feels most natural to them; it will put too many obstacles in the way of
the main purpose and make getting information or closing a purchase too
klunky. All that could be robbing you of sales - and sales targets -
that you never knew you ever had.
Let's put that in a more business-oriented way. Quickest way to
double the amount of money you get from your website? You can either
increase the number of visitors by 100% - or double the amount they
spend once they're there.
Guess which is easier and cheaper? The latter will cost around 10% of
the investment the former would, according to Nielsen and other
usability doyens, such as Paul Blunden, chief executive of The Usability
Company, a small consultancy based in Clerkenwell that's been talking to
companies about how to improve website usability since 2001. A case in
point is Danish online retailer Bon A'parte, which carried out a big
usability research project at the end of 2002. 'This told us a lot of
things we didn't know we were doing wrong,' says its e-commerce manager
Brian Andersen. Immediate changes made were fixing the index page,
allowing more browsing of the catalogue, and other navigation changes.
The result? 'We got an immediate improvement in conversion rates that
quickly paid for the work.'
Another example is financial services firm Charcol, which used
Blunden's company to help find ways to improve conversion rates on its
www.charcolonline.co.uk site. 'We found some of the results quite
horrifying,' says its head of e-commerce Russell Gould. It turned out
the system wasn't flexible enough to handle the many ways people
(naturally) write money figures out, like £100,000, 100K, or
100,000.00, and date formats were also different in different parts of
the site. 'Customers were getting kicked back a lot by things we
wouldn't have seen without testing,' he adds. But a few quick changes
resulted in happier customers, a drop in calls to the call centre, and
almost immediate hikes in conversion rates. But surely this should be
the role of the designers? Good website layout and functionality is what
we pay them for, surely?
The reality is that until recently too many designers concentrated on
the 'wow' factor, and may have lacked the in-house usability expertise
they should have. As Nielsen puts it, 'That spinning 3D view of the
product your web design agency says is cool should only be there after
you have tested that real users can view it without being confused.'
Blunden adds: 'You can't assume your web design agency does this - you
should talk about it from the start and make sure they can demonstrate
they have, or can access, the expertise.' If nothing else, many wheels
may have been reinvented. 'I'm amazed at how many companies don't just
steal the ideas that obviously work from sites like Google and Amazon,'
muses SciVisum's chief executive Deri Jones. Leading internet marketing
technology companies like Agency.com agree. 'In the UK, we think of
usability as a bit fluffy,' says its head of information architecture,
Clare Munday. 'That means clients don't want to pay for it; so if your
design agency doesn't do it inherently, it may not get done at the right
stage, from the start. US and Asia-Pacific clients are much more
demanding on this as the best customer experience is a high value for
them.'
Luckily, there are a number of ways sound design principles can be
applied to either guide design of a revamped website, or lead from the
start. But many companies won't have the luxury of a complete overhaul.
The good news is that by applying a combination of analysis of existing
usage and user testing of fixed components, websites can be fixed
in-flight and with great return on investment (ROI). As Agency's Munday
says: 'Assessment of the site from a usability viewpoint doesn't have to
cost a lot - but can return great value in the form of better customer
retention and loyalty, conversion, and scalability.'
We mentioned ROI. It's one of the peculiarities of usability that
it's actually quite difficult to separate out specific ROI directly
attributable to improved usability on its own. 'It can be hard to
quantify,' confirms SciVisum's Jones. 'Talk about ROI on usability is
difficult, because few companies isolate it out,' admits The Usability
Company's Blunden. 'But users tend to report to us that as part of a
general revamp of the website they may see massive increases in turnover
for as little as £40,000 worth of work.'
If you think 'usability' and 'user testing' is a weird combination,
you probably won't be that worried about 'wasted', 'investment', and
'your website'.
Case Study: Victor Chandler Bets On Usability
Major bookmaker Victor Chandler (www.victorchandler.co.uk)
says it's reaped tangible benefits from its usability improvement work.
Joe Coughlin, Gibraltar-based project manager at the firm, used The
Usability Company to consolidate three different websites and improve
overall usability - a process that took nine months, but resulted in
what he says is 'at least' a 30% increase in business since.
Coughlin says a key reason to bring in a usability third-party is
that in-house expertise is very useful, but you may still have blind
spots as to what real-life customers actually do. 'While we know an
awful lot about betting products, we discovered many ways we could make
account management and registration go an awful lot smoother,' he told
Internet World. 'We also found that online punters didn't always want to
do things the way we wanted them to.' As a result, Coughlin is a convert
to prototyping and user testing for all e-commerce sites. 'You'll save
yourself an awful lot of time,' he says - and advice from your bookie is
normally worth following.
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