Forrester Research on Web Site Design
You can shell out $279 for a recently issued 17-page report on web site design from Forrester Research, or you can take advantage of the fact that highlights are available in a short interview with Bruce Temkin, the report's main author, that was published in the June 12 edition of the Wall Street Journal.Forrester evaluates web sites along four dimensions: value, navigation, presentation, and trust (more below). In the Wall Street Journal interview, Temkin reports that value used to be the major area of weakness, but that now problems typically involve navigation: "As sites get bigger and more complex, they have much more value, but it's harder to have people get to what they want."
Another common problem Temkin mentions is sites' failure to give visitors confidence that they will find it easy to complete the tasks they're interested in carrying out. Temkin says,
A basic usability principle is that if you want someone to continue with a process, such as buying something, two fundamental things should happen: Users should feel there is a high likelihood they can accomplish the task, and they should be given clear evidence that they are making progress along the way. A lot of sites don't design their home pages for that to occur.Temkin advises that the home page include links that make it obvious how visitors can get started on accomplishing key goals.
To ensure that your web site works well for visitors, Forrester recommends using three questions as your basic design guides:
- Who are your users?
- What are their goals?
- How are you going to help them achieve those goals?
To truly qualify as “personas,” customer models should be based on user research, formatted as a narrative, include details about motivations, goals, and behavior (at the appropriate level), include contextual/environmental insights (where they use the channel, when they use the channel, channel alternatives), and have a human name and face. See the December 18, 2003, Report “The Power Of Design Personas.” [p. 13]Once the personas have been defined, it is time to begin the iterative process of designing a site that straightforwardly helps these representative visitors achieve their goals. Forrester provides questions (pdf) to use in assessing your site along the four key dimensions mentioned earlier:
Value
- Does the home page provide evidence that user goals can be completed?
- Is essential content available where needed?
- Is essential function available where needed?
- Are essential content and function given priority on the page?
- Are category and subcategory names clear and mutually exclusive?
- Do menu categories immediately expose or describe their subcategories?
- Are items classified logically?
- Is the task flow efficient?
- Are hyperlinks clear and informative?
- Are keyword-based searches comprehensive and precise?
- Does the site use language that’s easy to understand?
- Does the site use graphics, icons, and symbols that are easy to understand?
- Is text legible?
- Does text formatting and layout support easy scanning?
- Do page layouts use space effectively?
- Are form fields and interactive elements placed logically on the page?
- Are interactive elements easily recognizable?
- Are interactive elements consistent?
- Does the site accommodate the user’s range of hand-eye coordination?
- Does the site present privacy and security policies in context?
- Do pages provide location cues?
- Does site functionality provide feedback in response to user actions?
- Is contextual help available at key points?
- Does the site help users recover from errors?
- Does the site perform well?
Labels: Usability
posted by Karen Nelson @ 11:20 PM
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