In August 2012 we produced a report to share our findings with partner agencies. This was to show them common issues and also set a baseline for acceptable usability.
At the same time we also collated observations from Neilson’s usability week lectures that several staff members attended.
Here are the documents:
- Usability-of-SE-websites-10
- what this space 🙂
The SE findings summarise as:
Layout & Design issues
- Right hand blocks are totally ignored unless they look really boring and are relevant to the page.
- Too many calls to action are “below the fold”
- Headers are too deep and push content below the fold
- Calls to action are not clear within the content
- Banners are a “Hit or Miss” affair and take up too much prime real estate at the top of pages
- Typography can aggravate or bore people
- People expect website to look and behave like every other website they use
Navigation
- People get lost on our sites. There are no breadcrumbs and navigation bars do not provide enough visual cues
- Obscure Terms like “IYC2012” are totally wasted as navigation options
- Common website behaviour leads people to believe that greyed out options are not available.
- Hyperlinks are too subtle.
- PDF links are too prominent
- User journeys that jump between sites confuse customers
- Sectors Suck…
Language & Content
- Customers want to see their language and not ours
- Content needs to make sense no matter what context it is in. Customers may have hit this page directly from search
- PDF’s do not work as website replacements. They are normally well received but almost always break the user journey. #They also tend to contain the wrong call’s to action for online consumption.
- Calls to action need to be more prominent in blocks of content or at the bottom of pages
- People spell things wrong. Keep it simple
- Headings are critical. They vary between Active and Questioning. Customers often commented “What do you want me to do”