Web Designing - The User Experience

Lets have a look at Web Designing. We will not be discussing the technical side of designing a web page. But more to the User Experience side. One may call it the creative side of the web design.

Today there are many organizations and individuals involved in designing web pages. They specialize in coding  the web page. And some also design the appearance of the page. As a marketer you should be able to tell the designers what you think the site should look like to give a better experience to your customers and to properly reflect your brand image. As we all know there are many colors, images, words we associate with different products and services. So we need to keep it in mind to incorporate those to our web site.

And when we say attractive, user friendly interface some may go overboard and load the site with bright colors and lots of pictures and advertisements. But this will just slow down the web page loading speed and clutter the users screen. We have to understand what the customer is looking for and improve that experience through support of attractive media.

There are some 25 commonly used aspects to see whether a web site is user friendly or not. In the Sri Lankan context I have selected the popular site, www.anything.lk for an example evaluation.

25‐point Website Usability Checklist

Accessibility

1. Site load‐time is reasonable - I found this to a little slow. Mainly due to the large number of images contained in this page.

2. Adequate text‐to‐background contrast - The site had a good (black & white) contrast between letters & background.

3. Font size/spacing is easy to read - It is clearly readable to an average person.

4. Flash & add‐ons are used sparingly - This aspect is also satisfactory in this web page. We can see there are several banner ads on this page at the top and on by the side.

5. Images have appropriate ALT tags - This is also satisfied. When moved over an image it gives a small description about the picture & its location.

6. Site has custom not‐found/404 page - The site does have this page. But the letters are almost the same color as the background making it hard to read.

Identity

7. Company logo is prominently placed - As you can see the anything.lk logo is places on top of every page clearly visible. 

8. Tagline makes company’s purpose clear - Although there is no tagline shown in the web site the wording that appear on the tab says "Best Deals | Best Online Shopping.." which gives a clear idea about the purpose of the company.

9. Home‐page is digestible in 5 seconds - It actually takes much longer than that to clearly understand the homepage. This is mainly due to the large number of offers shown in the home page.

10. Clear path to company information - We can see they have give links to their company details at the bottom of the home page.

11. Clear path to contact information - Same with the contact details. They have included the relevant link at the bottom of the home page along with tabs for Facebook and Twitter contacts.

Navigation

12. Main navigation is easily identifiable - As shown here the main tabs for navigation are very clear and precise.

13. Navigation labels are clear & concise - The labels on the navigation tabs give a very clear description about their links.

14. Number of buttons/links is reasonable - We can say that this site has a reasonably adequate number of buttons.

15. Company logo is linked to home‐page - By clicking the logo, surfers can go back to the home page at any given time.

16. Links are consistent & easy to identify - The navigation links are consistent over time and are easy to identify as to where they would lead to.

17. Site search is easy to access - We can see that this site doesn't have the site search option. This is a considerable draw back. Surfers should be allowed to search the site easily for any specific information the require.

 

Content

18. Major headings are clear & descriptive - We can see the Deals, Prices, Time Periods as the major headings in this site and they are very clear and contrasting to the background to be more readable.

19. Critical content is above the “fold” - The critical information such as the price, expiry dates of offers and such are clear and visible above the rest.

20. Styles & colors are consistent - The fonts, sizes, the colors used in the prices, discounts,  deadlines are consistent to make it more easy for the consumers.

21. Emphasis (bold, etc.) is used sparingly - Price, is the most important info. in a web site as this. And they have used bold lettering for price, various colors for the information they want to emphasise in a good manner.

22. Ads & pop‐ups are unobtrusive - As said at the beginning the banner ads are located seperately to the web page content and there are hardly any pop up ads. Therefore they do not obstruct the web page content.

23. Main copy is concise & explanatory - The site communicates its purpose and its content at a glance. We can understand that this is a web site that provides cash discounts and other deals with respect to any kind of product or service with in Sri Lanka.

24. URLs are meaningful & user‐friendly - The URL of www.anything.lk clearly gives the meaning of the site and is attractive to the users as one place to get a wide range of products and services.

25. HTML page titles are explanatory - The HTML you see by clicking the "Events" tab is anything.lk/events/ which explains what that page is all about.

This is just my opinion and comment on this site. You may have slightly different views. Do try these 25 points on your favorite web site as well  and try to evaluate if it really is user friendly.