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ARTICLES and tapes
Beyond Bells and Whistles: Web Design MSN.com
c. Anita M. Harris (for reprint permission please
email).
Design to Communicate
by Anita M. Harris
(MSN August, 2001)
Not along ago, it seemed like a bit of JavaScript and some flashy
graphics could make you a fast fortune on the Web. But with today's fierce
competition for online customers, bells and whistles are not enough:
Successful sites must be designed with audience needs and goals in mind.
So says Bill Gribbons, a Web usability expert and chair of graduate
studies in Human Factors in Information Design at Bentley College near
Boston, Massachusetts. He describes a company that spent millions of dollars
to build a site that offered visitors access to 200 magazines. The site
wasn't doing well, so its creators asked Gribbons, who also heads Bentley’s
not-for-profit Design and Usability Testing Center, to figure out what was
wrong. Through interviews and observation, Gribbons determined that the
site's visitors did not want 200 magazines. "They wanted information
tailored for their specific interests, culled and delivered, based on a
specific profile." But it was too late. The company was losing money
rapidly. Before it had a chance to make crucial changes, it went belly up.
Here are six basic pointers designed to help you avoid the magazine
distributor’s mistakes, capture your audience's attention, and communicate
your message effectively.
1. Find out what your users want
According to Gribbons, the magazine company had not taken the first key step
in building a successful site: researching the marketplace to find out what
potential users want. Gribbons advocates a process he calls "goal-driven
design," which involves carefully assessing your market's goals and
requirements. "This will save you time and avoid costly mistakes in the long
run," Gribbons says.
In conducting research and testing for major sites such as Monster.com,
Gribbons has found that users' goals can be complex. Each visitor to a site
is different, and the same user may respond in different ways on different
sites.
2. Make it easy for users to get what they need
Users' reactions depend on the return they are receiving. Can they find
the information they need? Can they easily complete a transaction? "If users
get value from using a site, they will work hard to overcome incredible
design obstacles," and they will return to the site, Gribbons says. But a
user who receives only marginal value from the site will give up and leave
the site at the slightest difficulty.
Gribbons recently tested an e-commerce site that allowed visitors to type
only about ten words onto a form, which made it difficult to complete.
"There is nothing more frustrating to a visitor who wants to type in
something and it doesn't fit," he says. Someone who really needs to buy the
product might try to find a way around the problem, but according to
Gribbons, many people quit the site rather than struggle with frustrating
design flaws.
3. Limit the choices
Be careful not to overwhelm your visitors with information. "It is
tempting to think of everything any visitor might possibly want to do on a
site, and crowd it onto the home page," Gribbons says. Some home pages
include 100 links--or more. Alen Yen, president of the
Interactive
Factory, a Web design and training
firm in Boston, advises grouping multiple links into at most seven sections.
Home pages with too many links often appear disorganized. This can be a
major problem, Gribbons says, because people can’t find what they are
looking for, and "it suggests that there is something seriously wrong with
your design."
In testing the site of a health maintenance organization that had 70
links on its home page, Gribbons determined that 90 percent of visitors were
clicking on just three of the links. He advised the organization to include
only those three links on the home page. "Everything else should be at
successively deeper levels in the site," he says.
4. Create a hierarchy that users will understand
For clear and easy access to those deeper levels, information
architecture and navigation are critical. "Ideally, your site's architecture
should mirror a model that is known to the user." Gribbons describes a
college Web site that presented information based on its institutional
framework, setting forth the college's divisions and departments on its home
page. But visitors to the site were mainly parents and 17-year-olds who were
thinking of enrolling; they did not understand that structure and were
unable to find the information they needed.
5. Be consistent
It is also important to use colors, type styles, terminology, labels, and
forms in a uniform manner. That is because, because, "as humans, we are
pattern –seekers, Gribbons says. "Our cognitive systems are hardwired
to expect patternsIf patterns are there, our interactions take place at the
subconscious level, and occur smoothly." But if a site is not consistent,
"you drive users to interact at a conscious level. They become nervous and
tentative. Their performance and speed drop off."
In e-commerce transactions, "credibility and a sense of confidence are
absolutely essential." Design inconsistencies work against these things, and
when users become anxious, transactions go uncompleted. To maintain
consistency, Gribbons recommends developing a visual and verbal style guide
for every site.
Yen advocates using navigation bars that link to the site's main sections
from every page. Cues that appear in the same spot on each page, such as
color or icons, can let visitors know, at all times, just what area of the
site they are in.
Yen also advises including headers or links to break up large areas of
text, so that readers do not become lost in a sea of content.
6.Know how users will access your site
You should also know what technology your audience will use to access
your site, according to Matthew T. Grant, minister of information for
Aquent,
a Boston-based international staffing agency that places Web designers,
developers and producers.
While some visitors with high-speed Web access may enjoy complex
graphical presentations, people with slower, dial-up modems may lose
patience waiting for the pages to load. Those seeking quick access to
information via tiny wireless or handheld devices may not be able to view
any graphics at all. .
In order to understand your prospective audience, it is well worth
profiling prospective users to make sure that your site will meet their
needs, Gribbons says. Depending on the complexity of your site, a few days
or weeks spent in research and testing before you launch should prove highly
beneficial down the road.
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