| For most websites in Asia, there seems to be a distinct lack of importance given to adequate user research prior to development. This results in significant gaps between what is actually offered and what the intended audience is looking for; defeating the whole concept of self-serving websites.
Users tend to zero in on what their looking for, using the different navigatioon options that are offered by the site. It is pretty much a trial and error process. They pick up on a broad keyword or topic that is, hopefully, relevent and then hope narrow down to what they're looking for as they click deeper into the site. The problem is that most sites in Asia don't accomodate for this and in tests, we have seen many attempts end in failure.
"If readers must puzzle over unfamiliar or ambiguous
words, you are making them work harder than they need to."
Crawford Kilian, Writing for the Web
"Visitors need and use search boxes because they
have something specific in mind, and what they have in mind could
mean business for your company. Despite this vital fact, most sites
have seemingly installed some standard, off-the-shelf, discount
search function that brings up either tons of irrelevant results
or, just as unhelpfully, no results at all." Martin
Lindstrom, Brand
Suffers from Search Dysfunctions
Did you know that usable web sites typically load up faster. They
also get the information across about what your site is about and
what it has to offer far more efficiently.
Inconsistent wording and page layoute can confuse users who
think they ended up in the wrong spot because the destination page
had a title that differed vastly from the link that took them there.
According to a study by Ant Ozok and Gavriel Salvendy at Purdue
University, it was found that consistent interfaces resulted in:
- a reduction of task completion times
- a reduction in errors
- an increase in user satisfaction
According to CIO
Magazine, "If people come to your site and don't hit the
search button, they are 50 percent more likely to find information
than if they did hit the search button." A study by Zona Research found that 62% of Web shoppers have
given up looking for the item they wanted to buy online.
Users' success at finding their target drops off sharply
after four clicks. Designing sites with fewer, longer pages is a
better strategy than designing sites with more short pages.
This results in user drop-offs, abandoned shopping carts,
low repeat traffic, wasted marketing budgets and bad publicity.
This problem has hit the online banking sector very hard recently,
with user drop-off rates at around 53 per cent (research by Cyber
Dialogue).
Ozok,
A. A. and Salvendy, G., Measuring consistency of Web page design and
its effects on performance and satisfaction, Ergonomics, Vol. 43,
No. 4, 443-460 (2000). Grudin, J., The
case against user interface consistency, Communications of the ACM,
32, 1164-1173 (1989).
User Interface Engineering, North Andover, Mass.
Based on usability tests of popular Web sites with 165 users in
1997 and 1998.
Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, Mass.,
Why Most Web Sites Fail, September 1998
Schneider, W. and Shiffrin, R.M., Controlled
and automatic human information processing: detection, search and
attention, Psychological Review, 84, 1-66 (1997).
| About the author |
 |
Gul Amir Khan is the Chief Usability Consultant for MicroUsability and the current President of the Usability Professional's Association (Singapore Chapter). Gul has been trained in Game Theory and Strategic Behavior Analysis and has incorporated these techniques in web usability engineering. He has conducted numerous usability projects and usability workshops across Asia. |
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