Usability Analysis

Usability Analysis

"Usability Analysis" is the process of researching your website’s USAGE “appeal” to its intended audience (not to be confused with its VISUAL appeal). An effective analysis requires an understanding of your readers collective needs and how best to deliver your content or products to them.

• Do you have the content that people are looking for?
• Can they find their way to it?
• Are they entering your site from the Home Page?
• Does your website respond in an expected fashion?
• Does your website speak their language?
• Are obvious concerns answered as they arise?
• Is there any design or branding elements that get in the way?

IPO Digital Design have taken usability research and turned it into a series of “best practice” guidelines that are incorporated into initial design planning (see website design) thus ensuring that your website will not only LOOK appealing but that it will also BE appealing.

It is the collective needs of your site readers that define your site structure, the naming and placement of individual page elements and the helpful functionality required to achieve their goals.

Feel welcome to read the ‘background’ for a more detailed overview of just how important creating a positive user experience is to the online ‘stick ability’ of your website, or use the contact form to arrange for a usability analysis of your existing design.

Background

Is it a product or a service?

“Search Engine Optimisation” is the process of optimising website readability for search scripts whilst “Usability” is the same process for real people, and is based on historical research into ALL aspects of human interaction with websites. The Internet has been around long enough for us to measure why one company succeeds and another fails in the same space.

These studies were largely driven by online retail which had the most to gain from an understanding of the new medium and they quickly learnt that online behaviour is vastly different from its real world equivalent (see my tutorial on ecommerce design). The new guidelines that were learnt can be applied to non-retail websites as well since the overwhelming goal is the same – to make a website more appealing and helpful to the reader.

Probably the best example of change can be seen in how designers deal with site navigation. A typical website used to be designed around the “About Us – Products – Services – Contact Us” navigation model, and whilst those may seem logical content categories, they make absolutely no sense to someone visiting the website. To challenge them with the task of discerning an unknown sorting criteria as to whether they are seeking a “Product” or a “Service” (and to place “About Us” before “Products”) sends a very clear message that the focus of the website is not on customer service - effectively saying “This is ME, these are MY products, this is what I offer, and this is MY website”.

Site readers have been discovered to be incredibly intolerant - they want what THEY want, and they want the shortest route from their entry page to that information. If you can satisfy that need then they will start asking further questions like “Who are these guys?”

Creating “a positive user experience” is about more than simply adjusting links to display recognisable names; it’s about understanding your audience, providing them with clear pathways to what they seek, answering their concerns as they arise, giving them a feeling of understanding, familiarity and expectation – and therefore ‘control’ – and building up their trust of your website (and by extension… trust of your business).

As with most things, the easiest option is usually the wrong one. Taking a pile of products or articles and throwing them together into logical categories and then adding a giant logo and the company’s history might be the quickest way to build a website, but it won’t win you any favours with your customers. On the Internet your website is probably open in a browser window right next to your oppositions, so anything that you can do to “win over” readers becomes vital to your online survival.

Modern usability needs to be incorporated during the initial design phases by starting with a flow analysis – planning just how a site reader can get from one point in the website to another – to ensure that no matter which page a reader lands on as a result of search, that access to similar page material and main categories are available. Research of user behaviour should identify common bottlenecks (areas where users become disorientated or need reassurance) and a professional design will utilise these spots to provide solutions that build trust.

Design consistency also plays a big role in giving readers a sense of expectation. Links to other site pages, external websites, and PDF files should be visually different so that the reader knows in advance what to expect. Links should NEVER say “click here” because both readers and search engines have no idea what the link is to – instead change the link to cover an explanation of the target e.g. “Learn more about our book binding” as opposed to “We do book binding (click here)”. Whenever a reader interacts with your website and the resulting action is unexpected you will lose trust because you have proven their expectation wrong – you have removed ‘control’ from them.

Techniques

Several key areas of a website are checked for common usability errors and suggestions are made to resolve them. These combined with accurate tracking statistics to ensure customer flow can do as much for a website as a full search engine optimisation campaign (and should be carried out before attempting one).

Navigation

• Does the site flow from all points? A reader should be able to enter the site on any page and logically navigate to any other page.
• Is search available? 1/3rd of all readers won’t even take the time to learn a new navigation structure if a search box is present, so it is imperative that the results include both content and products and a description of what was found.
• Are navigation links logically named with the language the reader would use to describe their content?
• Does the navigation include trust links? Links to pages describing the company, their polices, their contact details, or other non-product related information.

Content

• Is the text scan-able? Research shows that readers won’t read text on a page until they have determined its relevance to their goal, so it is imperative that keywords are bolded or present in headings and sub-headings.
• Is their access to similar content on the page? Either in the form of word links within the text or a ‘similar articles’ section at the bottom of the page.
• Does the style of writing need a review? Writing for the web is a vastly different skill than writing for printed material, yet most website content is merely ‘pasted’. It takes 50% longer to read something on screen than on a page.
• Look for known styling errors. Paragraphs that extend the full width of a page, content not broken up by lists of headings.

Design

• Do the visual elements of the design “shout out” over the content? Human eyes “see” in a predefined order (movement, multiple colours, large blocks of single colour, coloured fonts, large font sizes, bold, italic, and finally text) so a bad design can actually distract a reader from achieving their goal e.g. multiple animated banners.
• Does the logo or branding interfere with a pages scan-ability? Readers only care who you are after trust has been established and any attempt to force branding on them has a negative effect.
• Does the design build on existing identity through visual association?

Functionality

• Do buttons and links produce expected results? Describe where a link goes, or what a button does so that readers don’t receive any surprises.
• Do site widgets actually help narrow down large quantities of data? Most site functionality - e.g. Search, Wizard - are designed to reduce confusion and help readers make decisions or find content so it is important that their usage is monitored. Are people searching for content you don’t have? Could they be looking for a product using a variation of the name?

The best way to judge whether usability suggestions are effective is to monitor site usage through analytics and to ask your readers anonymously (either through email marketing or brief on-site questionnaires).