Enhancing Web site usability

Rough Notes, Aug 2002 by Ashenhurst, John

Two books offer insight, practical advice

Agency Web sites can be an important extension of traditional marketing, sales, and service efforts. But poorly done sites can diminish agency credibility and drive away customers. Two recommended books provide commonsense, general advice about how to make your site more usable-and thus more useful to your prospects and customers.

One is Homepage Usability, 50 Websites Deconstructed, by Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir. Jakob Nielsen and Donald Norman have collaborated for years, through their Nielsen Norman Group, to bring usability to the design of software and physical objects. One doesn't have to look far to realize they still have plenty to do. (Norman is the author of the best-seller The Design of Everyday Things Tahir is an alumna of the Nielsen Norman Group.)

I've reported on and employed Nielsen's insights relative to Web site design in past articles and have recommended his book, Designing Web Usability, which is now available in 14 different languages. His new book, Homepage Usability, focuses strictly on homepages, rather than the larger subject of his earlier book.

Every site must have a homepage. Generally it's the first thing a visitor sees. If the homepage doesn't immediately appear to be relevant, the visitor will click the Back button, perhaps never to return. So the homepage has a special role to play and it's critical to the success of the site. There are a finite number of principles of good homepage design, and Nielsen has laid out and illustrated them in his handsome new book.

Nielsen/Tahir devote the first 50 pages to an overview of the principles of homepage design. The discussion is so clear, well organized, and convincing (well, of course one can take exception here and there) that you want to immediately check your own homepage, something Nielsen anticipates and helps you do. The results of a self-- evaluation can be discouraging but certainly provide you specific ideas for improvement.

The balance of the book examines 50 homepages, mostly by well-known organizations, such as Amazon, Citigroup, and ESPN. Each homepage is reproduced in color, and the accompanying text offers in-context concreteness that the earlier general principles section lacks. The book lends itself to browsing as well as reading through. I highly recommend it. Your homepage is the most important one on your

Web site. It's where visitors form quick impressions and it's the entry point to marketing, sales, and service content. The tips below have been extracted from an extensive list in Homepage Usability: 50 Website., Deconstructed.

1) Who are you? Visitors need to know who you are, first thing. Your agency name and logo should be quickly visible, perhaps best placed in the upper left corner. They should be large enough to digest but not take too much screen real estate.

2) What do you do? Visitors also need to know what you do and perhaps why what you do is special. You need a tag line that succinctly summarizes what you are all about. Then you may need to provide other summary information that further positions your organization.

3) What's important? Take time to figure out what's most important in your site from your visitor's point of view and then make sure you provide clear and direct access to those other pages from your homepage. Make your site convenient to navigate.

4) Homepage uniqueness: Your whole site should have functional and design consistency, but your homepage should stand out from other pages. Visitors should know immediately that they're on the homepage and not a subsidiary page.

5) Communication consistency:

Your homepage and your site in general should be consistent in look and content with all other communication efforts-whether brochures, business cards, letterhead, invoices, signage and so on.

6) Privacy: Web visitors are often concerned about identifying themselves in any way because they suspect their personal information will be used to irritate them via spam, calls, junk mail, and the like. If you take information, make certain you have a privacy policy, explain it, and then live with it.

7) Out-facing language:

Language in text and headings should be oriented toward how customers see you and what they're likely to be interested in rather than how the customers fit into your business plan and organizational structure.

8) Primary navigation: Make it easy for visitors to understand how to navigate your site, generally through a menu in a left-hand column. Make the whole menu always visible. If visitors don't see something immediately, they may assume it isn't there. Navigation at the top of the page, especially if it's above some graphics, tends to be ignored.

9) Search: Every site, unless it's very small, should have a site search capability. Put the search box in an obvious, easy to spot place, perhaps at the top of your left-hand menu column. Make it wide enough to be usable and put a "search" or "go" button next to it. Don't offer general Web searches. It isn't necessary and you'll confuse the visitor.