| 1. Work
out your site visitors' immediate needs Your website has
to provide information that fulfils the
immediate needs of your site visitors.
This is the fundamental principle behind
usable website design, so let's repeat it
one more time: Your website has to
provide information that fulfils the
immediate needs of your site visitors.
OK, now
we've got that straight, we come up
against a problem: Your goals for the
website are probably different to the
immediate needs of your site visitors. Oh
dear.
Let's
illustrate this problem, and its
solution, with the example of a web
design company's website. Their immediate
goal is to get visitors to contact them
and ultimately commission them to do some
web development work. Their site visitors
are probably interested in getting web
development work done (if not, why are
they on this website?), but it's unlikely
that this is their immediate need when
they arrive at the website.
The
immediate needs of the site visitors' are
probably to answer questions like:
- Can
I trust them?
- Are
they any good at what they do?
- Will
they get the job done?
Before
the website begins to sell to its site
visitors, it has to answer their
questions and put their fears to rest.
This is fundamentally important, so one
more time: Before the website begins to
sell to its site visitors, it has to
answer their questions and put their
fears to rest.
In the
case of this web design company, they
could provide a portfolio, client
testimonials etc. Can you think of any
other information they should offer?
2.
Create an information flow
Now
we've worked out what our site visitors'
immediate needs are, we need to create an
information flow, a path (or paths) that
your site visitors will traverse whilst
on your website. The path(s) will
initially address their concerns and
needs and will gradually take them
towards completing your goal for them. To
create this plan we'll need to:
- Identify
the different groups of people
who'll use your website
- Work
out what you want each of these
groups to achieve on your website
- Identify
the information you'll need to
provide for them to achieve this
(and in what order)
- Work
out what might put them off
achieving this
- Identify
the information you'll need to
provide to prevent them being put
off
>From
this, you'll be able to create a list of
website pages and a rough idea of how
they might flow together. You'll then be
able to work out exactly what pages to
include on the website and how to group
these pages together.
Bear in
mind though, some users will need more
information than others, so you'll always
need to provide them with a choice of
continuing on the information flow or
jumping off so that they can achieve the
goal you've set for them.
Going
back to the website of the web design
company, an information flow that their
site visitors might go on could look
something like this:
- Homepage
- Portfolio
- Client
testimonials
- Company
background
- Staff
bios
- Terms
& conditions
- Good
web design tips
- Contact
us
The web
design company's ultimate goal is for
site visitors to contact them and request
their services. Wherever users are in
this flow, they must be able to easily
and immediately jump straight to the
contact page at any point.
You've
probably already seen this in action on
websites. You arrive at the homepage and
there are two or three prominent links
(often in the form of boxes) telling you
some basic information and requesting
that you click on them to take you into
some other part of the website. You go to
that page on the website, read the
information and then choose where to go
next. And this keeps going on, until you
either quit or complete the desired goal
of the website.
So, the
web design company's homepage might look
something like what you see at http://www.webcredible.co.uk/images/plan-usable.gif.
The
three boxes in the middle answer some
immediate questions that users may have
and proactively address their concerns.
The contact us button on the top-left can
remain in that position on every page, so
users always have the opportunity to jump
to the contact page.
3.
Usability testing
Once the
website plan has been created, it's time
to test it. This is the most important
usability test that needs to be done and
the one that will save you the most time
and money in the long run. Every £1
invested in making your website
easy-to-use returns £10 to £100
(source:http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/23/).
If you
don't do any usability testing you may
discover that the structure of the
website doesn't make sense once the
website's up and running. This can and
has happened and it leaves you with two
choices: redesign the website or make a
new website - neither are attractive
options.
The most
common objections to doing usability
testing are:
- It's
too expensive!
- It'll
take too much time!
- I
don't know how to do it!
Wrong,
wrong, and wrong! Usability testing,
especially at this early stage, is
incredibly cheap, quick, informal and
easy to do. You just need to show five
people the plan/site map of the website
and ask them:
- What's
the point of this website?
- If
you were on this homepage, where
you would click? And where after
that?
- Is
it what you need?
That's
it! As long as these five people roughly
fit into your user profile everything
should be fine. It's been shown that
using five people for a usability test
will uncover 85% of the usability issues
of the website (source:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html).
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