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Congratulations! This is a free usability
review from UsabilityInstitute.com. "Usability" refers
to how easy and effective it is to use a Web site. Although
it involves how a site looks (graphic artwork), it is primarily
concerned with how a site works, what you click on, what happens,
and whether the site does its job. Perhaps
this review is all you need to improve your site. If that's
the case, great. Please mention UsabilityInstitute.com if
you talk with others who need help with their site.
The following three sections provide a general
analysis of your website from a relatively quick review. Although
Web design is still perceived as a highly creative endeavor,
there are many aspects of it that call for standardization
and compliance with widely established conventions. Implementing
even a few of the ideas below can really improve a site.
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This
first section is intended for typical public web sites
(for products and corporate information), but also applies
for the most part to intranets and software applications
that run in a browser. We've been advocating many of
these ideas—in the context of general software—since
our 1997 book,
Computers Stink, but they've been beautifully
enumerated for WWW purposes in Steve Krug's book, "Don't
Make Me Think." |
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Click
for explanation |
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Hover
for explanation
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Comments |
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1. |
Logo
in top left, linked to home |
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Not exactly. The
Home link above the navigation but it actually looks more
like a heading of the table than a navigation item. This
is compounded slightly by the fact that not all of the
other items in the left nav are links... others are simply
groupings/headings. And, it bumps around vertically as
I change pages. |
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2. |
Tagline |
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Canada's nat stat
agency |
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3. |
Welcome
blurb |
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With
this type of site, no additional explanation is needed.
(After writing that sentence, I stumbled upon your Flash
intro. You might actually try to put a short link to this
in the position where a welcome blurb might be... but it
would have to have a compelling, small graphic to imply
animation/video.) |
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4. |
Plain
wording |
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Consider changing
"Important Notices" on intro page, to "Legal Notices" |
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5. |
No
'happy talk' |
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6. |
Concise
wording |
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7. |
Visited
pages are distinguished by link color-coding |
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Yes,
I clicked around some in the tables and saw where I had
been. |
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8. |
"Utilities" are
easy to find |
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The
positioning of the blue and black bar items at the top
might be an area for improvement... grouping and segregating
these items more closely to the patterns emerging as standards
on other sites... perhaps putting most of them at upper
right and some in main/secondary navigation; others only
at bottom of page. (10 minutes later: aha, the print/save/highlight
onoff buttons... these are page utilities(!) show up embedded
in the left nav. Site utilities should perhaps always
be upper-leftmost; page utilities somewhere below them.
See Microsoft technical pages.) |
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9. |
Search
on all pages, with box and button |
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On a search-centric
site such as this, I think there's room for improvement
here. I'm conditioned to expect Search now in the upper
right. The Search link in the black bar muddies the picture. |
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10. |
"You
Are Here" indicator |
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I can see this starts
to get into the most difficult design challenge of the
site. When I click Home>Summary Tables, the left nav changes
and the only "you are here" indication is the fact that
Summary Tables is orange. Only when you drll down again
do the little indicator bars appear to the right of the
navigation... but the user might have trouble realizing
they're subsetted in summary tables. |
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11. |
Breadcrumbs'
as links |
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No.
I think this would be an important benefit on such a site,
realizing nonetheless that the hierarchy has multidimensionality
to it. That doesn't prevent it from being published in
a book, eh? So use the book order as the breadcrumb organization,
irrespective of how they navigated to a page. |
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Do your hands ache after a day at the keyboard??? This review
sponsored by RSIRescue.com ...
Want to save the environment for your kids? Check out our
sister site, WorkAtHomeWednesday.com
Summation & Next Steps
Overall Rating: Strives
/ Survives
/ Thrives
Recommendations:
- Consider a more powerful left nav that keeps context (doesn't
change/replace items) when the user drills down. More prebuilt
options might be available since it was created.
- Study other sites' layout of site utilities (search, about,
contact) and page utilities (print, save) and standardize.
- Put logo topmost.
- Improve typography and layout of page headers to orient
the reader better.
Hope this helps and let
me know what you think,
Jack Bellis, UsabilityInstitute.com
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