In previous web usability tests, Base One’s usabilty expert, Susanne Wraight and operations director, Paul Hatcher, discussed the following website problems. How many of these is your site guilty of?
Unnessary jargon
Jargon isn’t just about using industry terminology but creating any language on your site that users may not understand. ‘Fun’ names for areas of content aren’t entertaining for users when they’re not in on the joke and even the most beautifully designed icons make for bad navigational items if there is no explanation of what they mean. Technology terms should be kept as clear as possible – would ‘single Internet line’ be understood by more people written as ‘wired Internet connection for one computer’? Becoming overly formal is another common online pitfall we’ve seen – by keeping language clear and concise everybody understands what they’re reading.
Confusing clickability
We navigate websites by clicking so it helps if it is obvious what elements are clickable on a page. Online convention is that grey equals ‘not selectable’ so it’s best to avoid grey for items you want people to interact with, i.e. buttons and hyperlinks. Buttons are designed to be inherently clickable so users eyes are drawn to them. If your main call-to-action isn’t a button, you run the risk of it not being seen and therefore not clicked.
Images have high clickability too, but users have different expectations of what a click will lead to: a small image of a screenshot should link to a larger version where you can see more detail, not to your sign-up page. It might be clever but some users will see it as a trick and feel cheated.
Unhelpful help
Nothing frustrates users more than help that just makes things worse. If your form has a field that requires data to be entered in a specific way, don’t wait until after it’s been submitted to point out the mistake. And when you do point out those errors, make sure it’s clear. Red means ‘stop’ so stick to that for highlighting form errors or ‘out of stock’ messages – using green is just confusing.
Help also needs to be timely and adjacent. Notifying the user that a page is ‘updating’ without explaining why may lead them to assume they’ve done something wrong and abandon a form halfway through. Make it clear what element any explanation text relates to – placed too far away and the relationship is lost.
Ambiguous forms
Every test we’ve run that contained a form, had at least one site with no marking of the mandatory fields. Users dislike filling in forms but they hate filling in forms twice. Making it clear, up front, which fields are mandatory is essential for any form. Also don’t make users guess what information they can put into a field or a search box – if you put ‘city/postcode’ do users know they can search for airports too? Making assumptions or being vague allows misunderstanding: a ‘get in touch’ link is not the same as saying ‘book now’ – if you want a specific action then tell the user what that action is.
Irrelevant content
Eye-tracking heatmaps make it very clear what parts of a page users don’t look at and that images that don’t mean anything are easily overlooked. The same can apply to an animation that clarifies nothing or video for the sake of video. And don’t forget size – a stock image of a smiling lady does not increase in relevance the larger it gets. Every piece of content should earn its place on the page: because if it is there, something else can’t be.
Prioritising content
Users rely on visual clues to tell them what is important, so don’t make your main call-to-action hard to find. This includes putting it too far down the page, letting it blend in with the rest of the page or making it smaller than other less important content.
As users read left to right and top to bottom, if they run a search they expect to see their results at the top of the listing page, not recommended ‘popular content’ for example. ‘Popular’ is just one of many content categories that, through elevating, can cause users to mistake it for the extent of available content.
Don’t let prioritising free offers stop users from seeing more valuable paid content. Free is an eye-catching term but overuse can blind users to the availability of additional paid content.
Making it complicated
No-one sets out to make things complicated but often all a problem on a site needs, is to be simplified. Take, for example, a site where product listings have different information and layout depending on where you came from – either search or navigation. If both listings look the same then users understand what they’re looking at quicker and find it easier to compare products. Sometimes testing throws up issues where the user is complicating things. A review of page titles and copy to simplify the aims of the page could quickly remove any confusion.
Missed opportunities
Often user testing brings up new ideas; an overlooked piece of product information that helps users compare two items or an opportunity to add a link to more information. The fresh perspective user testing brings can only offer benefits in the long run.
