Back in 2002 I read an intersting article, of which the main theme was the introducion of usability techniques on web sites to help enhance a persons web browsing experience. The article spoke of designing sites where the end-user could get to the most important information in the fewest clicks and without the website performing all sorts of weird tricks on the browser the user was using to surf the site with i.e. resizing the browser window, links that opened up in a new window and the fact that the majority of ecommerce sites sucked big time.
Fast forward 7 years to 2009 and the truth of the matter is that web designers are still taking control over my browser, either by resizing, performing ad pop-ups, opening up new windows when I click on a link (if I want that to happen then I’ll right-click and choose new tab or new browser window, thank-you very much), throwing me into fully integrated flash sites when I would rather have a choice in the matter : html or flash, and finally the majority of websites that are of an ecommerce nature, do indeed still suck.
One of the most recent, interesting articles surrounding usability I have read came from Good Usability and their article on how to use the back button. Within the article they speak of how AJAX (a popular way of reloading information onto a page) is distorting how a user views a page being reloaded. The other reason we have a concern with AJAX is its dependancy on JavaScript but that is more an accessibility debate than a usability one.
As for the ecommerce niche, then this is where usability should be at the top of the development and design stage. It’s not, I’m afraid! We’ll to be fair there are a large number of ecommerce sites that perfrom well but on my journeys there are an even greater number who just don’t get ‘usability’.
If you feel your site is suffering via bad usability design then one of the first places to check is your analytics. Tell-tale signs will be high bounce rates including a high percentage of users leaving your site after placing goods in the add-to cart/basket page then giving up during the payment channels (this is known as Shopping Cart Abandonment). Sure, every site has ‘digital window shoppers’ that distort the true ratio of buyers fleeing from your site without making a purchase but you have to question why they left in the first place to find your answer! Also, look at products that aren’t even getting a sniff of traffic, why can’t users find them, are they aware you even offer these products?
I’ll be offering up a future post on ecommerce and usability needs but for now let me leave you with this simple question,’Why would you want to destroy any chance of a person buying from your site, make a difference, make your site easy-to-use! ‘
that should be the base of all design
The other thing I find really annoying on websites (aside from crazy flash and loads of AJAX) is when forms don’t remember my information and lose it between stages.
You try to book a plane ticket and the dates you wanted are not available and the form is empty and you need to put all the details back in. Its a killer – complained to scotrail about this a couple of weeks ago.
No one seemed to really care about it judging by their email.
@Mike using no-cache or js to delete the values of form fields upon submission is never a helpful usability situation to the end user but I have seen it used when data gathering is important and the company want to eradicate false enquiries esp. when you consider they may be running ppc against sign-ups.
Web designers must know this before constructing a website. what are the other tools to a make a web site more usability.