1 / 16

Improving Website Usability

Improving Website Usability. What is usability?. A measure of the quality of interaction between a person and a system. Good usability means: Easy to learn Efficient to use Easy to remember Error tolerant Subjectively pleasing. Why is usability important?. Low usability results in:

pakuna
Download Presentation

Improving Website Usability

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Improving Website Usability

  2. What is usability? • A measure of the quality of interaction between a person and a system. • Good usability means: • Easy to learn • Efficient to use • Easy to remember • Error tolerant • Subjectively pleasing

  3. Why is usability important? • Low usability results in: • Frustrated users • Visitors leaving • Reduction in repeat visits • Higher support costs • Decreased productivity

  4. How can I improve usability? • Many methods are available: • Take a user-centered approach: • Who are your users? • What are they trying to do? • Create prototypes (drafts) • Perform usability testing • Follow usability guidelines

  5. Who are your users? • User Similarities: • Task-oriented • Impatient • Reluctant to learn • Scan instead of read • Reading level: 8th grade

  6. Who are your users? • User Differences: • Computer skills • Type computer • Type of software • Motor skills • Vision

  7. What are they trying to do? • Task-oriented: identify user tasks • Questions to ask yourself: • What tasks does my content support? • Is there a better way to support that task? • What other tasks relate to this content? • 311 Citizen Contact Center

  8. Thinking Like Your Users • As an exercise, let’s take a user-centered approach and analyze a page on cabq.gov • Identify User Characteristics: • Age • Web Experience • Type of Computer • Vision • Motor Skills • Transportation • Identify User Task

  9. Thinking Like Your Users • What action will the user try to perform? • Support actions that users want to perform. • Will the user find the correct control? • Make controls visible and ‘clickable’. • Label controls accurately. • After performing the action, will the user know they did the right thing? • Provide clear feedback.

  10. Usability Testing • Watch real users as they attempt to perform typical tasks while “thinking out loud”. • Be cautious of user feedback: • Before they use your site/page • While looking at your site/page • After using your site/page • Redesign and test again • Make sure you fixed the problems and didn’t add new ones

  11. Number of Users • 3-5 are best: • Will find 70-80% of usability problems • 1 user is not enough: • Will only find 25% of usability problems • Likely to produce unique results that can’t be generalized

  12. Follow Usability Guidelines • Do not use popup windows • Do not require users to remember information from page to page • Support printing • Tables • Make line-by-line reading sensible • Summarize • Avoid using for layout

  13. Links • Use Consistent Clickability Cues • Colored text (blue) • Underlined text • Graphic + text • Write meaningful labels • Users should be able to sense the link’s destination from its label. • Link labels should match the names of their destination pages. • Link labels should be clearly different from each other. • Links embedded in text should be highly descriptive (9-10 words) and make sense when read out of context. Users ignore surrounding text.

  14. Scrolling • Eliminate horizontal scrolling • Avoid scroll stoppers • Use appropriate page lengths: • Short pages for ‘homepage’, navigation, scanning • Longer pages for reading continuous content • Stay within 4 screenfuls • Use a clickable list of contents on long pages

  15. Images • Use images that add value • Use thumbnails to preview large images • Place large images ‘below the fold’ • Label images to help users understand them.

  16. More Information on Usability • cabq.gov/standardsWeb Room Training and Education • UseIt.comWeekly columns on web usability by Jakob Nielsen • WebPagesThatSuck.comCountless examples of bad web design • Usability.govResearch-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines

More Related