Following basic usability principles and techniques is a best practice in managing your agency’s website.
How do you let people know that your office website stinks? Or how do you get them to care?
Let’s say you’ve been at your agency a year or so. You’ve mastered the office layout, and you can comfortably engage in the argument over the best falafel place.
Now let’s say when you open your agency’s website, there’s a problem that sticks out like a sore thumb. If the problem were fixed, the site would be SO much more usable! But what can you do about it? After all, you’re still a small fish in a pond, and all the web design decisions are made up the chain.
Here are some tips to persuade people to listen to you!
1. Prep first
Do some light reading: There are resources about web usability. Jakob Nielsen’s useit.com is an excellent starting point. There’s also Usability.gov, which compiles best practices for government websites and great advice on testing websites.
Learn the history: Is there usability testing in your office already? Ask around. You wouldn’t want to barge down the door only to find out your brilliant ideas will be in the next design. Also, see if there’s a way to look at website’s metrics. This can help increase your own understanding and provide evidence to convince others that changes are needed
2. Ring the bell, spread the word!
Don’t stay quiet: Now that you’re armed with knowledge, it’s time to take the problem up the chain. Use your new-found expertise and the evidence you’ve mustered to make your case. But remember, it may take a while before people see the problems.
Turn failures into conversation starters: The best teachable moments come from when things break. These are the moments when bad design is exposed, and there are opportunities to make changes. Whether it’s your site or someone else’s, treat every bad event as a chance to educate people.
3. Put words into action
Get your site tested: Talk to the First Fridays team about either having our experts evaluate your site, or doing in-person usability testing where stakeholders get to watch users go through their site. The consulting and testing are free!
Get trained: There is a free training program where you can go through the steps of usability testing alongside experts and take that knowledge back to your agency. Bonus — a list of usability resources below provides the basics for doing your own usability analyses.
Talk to others: If you find a website you really love, reach out to the folks who run it. More than likely, they’ll be happy to talk about best practices, tips and tricks, or some of the issues they’ve faced. The community is there — you just need to reach out.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember:
NEVER STOP TESTING.
When you find a site that looks like it’s ten years old, you share it with your friends and have a good laugh, right?
Don’t be that site.
Web design is an ongoing process. There is always something that can improved to make your site function better and be more usable. Seek opportunities to improve the site — you’ll improve user experience, and get noticed in the process.
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4 comments
Martha Garvey says:
December 6, 2012 at 10:50 pm (UTC -5 )
I think search results are critical. You’ve got seven seconds, max, to get it right.
Martha says:
November 30, 2012 at 5:05 pm (UTC -5 )
Would you give an example of a “stinking” website? And how was that problem solved?
Jonathan Rubin says:
December 3, 2012 at 4:08 pm (UTC -5 )
Websites that are really hurting usually suffer from one or more of these problems:
1. Ineffective navigation – Users can’t find info or don’t understand what information is under each tab
2. Buried top tasks – The most important content or pages are just too hard to find
3. Confusing jargon – Know what a “child page” or an “RFQ” is? Lots of people don’t either.
4. Too many words – Most pages ca stand to lose 50% or more of their text. Remember, the less text there is, the more the important content stands out.
5. Poor search results – If the right info doesn’t appear in the search on the first try, many visitors will leave and not come back.
Steve Ammidown says:
December 13, 2012 at 1:34 pm (UTC -5 )
As an example, I would look at IRS.gov. Their old site had a lot of great information, but hit all five of the points Jon mentions above. Their redesign, by comparison, is spectacular. They took feedback from First Fridays and others as they were going through their design process, and created a much friendlier and easier to use site.