Website Usability
- A topic that’s bandied about a lot, but put into practice only a little - if at all. Surely, the whole point of a website is that it is there to be used. Putting a website together without any concept of usability is like selling a car without an engine. - Oh! You want it to go as well?
Usability is a wide and burgeoning field but a lot of the discipline is common sense and this starts with identifying the target audience. Will be old folk, young folk, a mixture, disabled people, the man in the street, in the trade etc. etc.? Most clients never give this a thought which condemns the content from the start.
I am reworking a travel agency website. It is like many others - stuffed with little boxes screaming for attention. However, this particular client has a demographic that includes 54% over 36 years old. 5% are over 70 years old. I would think that this is typical for a lot of travel agents - a big user is the older person (probably female) who has been given a computer by their son in Canada to email or VOIP them.
A bit of wandering about the Internet will suggest the possiblility of looking for tickets to get over there or perhaps a once in a lifetime holiday with the old man. They will then be met usually by a mishmash of boxes all demanding attention and will be confused immediately.
So, the brief was - get it so an old biddy would feel comfortable and everyone else will surely be able to use the website.
- Cut the rubbish out
Anything that our old lady would not be interested in, A major culprit of junk is the duplicate link brigade - fill the space with links and ensure firstly that the visitor has no idea where he has been and describe identical links differently to really confuse him. - On this topic, the existing website has a javascript menu which does not colour visited links. A big NoNo for our little lady.
So, use CSS menus. - Use plenty of whitespace to pick out areas of interest easily.
- Decide on the website proposition from the start - what is its purpose? What can be done on the website?
The website is there to enable a visitor to book a holiday or a flight. - The big function of the existing website, but hidden away is the ability to search by destination or holiday type or select a current special.
The tagline is ‘Finding a holiday with XXX is easy’. Well, demonstrate how easy it is by emphasizing the search capability. Give the process an order - 1, 2 and 3. - The search function uses the usual HTML select boxes which permit only a little styling.
Change them for CSS menu boxes that permit almost unlimited styling.I am a frequent visitor to what I believe is the most useful website on CSS - cssplay.co.uk. It now has a brother - stunicholls.com which uses CSS + javascript. I don’t know how Stu Nicholls manages to think of the ways to use CSS. True, there are other CSS websites but they have but a few useful areas. CSSPLay is a veritable cornucopia of resources.
- Another important area that was hidden away was the Subscribe to Newsletter/Offers box.
Many visitors would take advantage of this. - A missing box from the tour-related pages was the ‘Tell a Friend’ box.Many older people travel in groups and the ability to send a page URL to a friend is an important tool
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Suggested:
