|
|
This is a quick usabilty review of The Vine, a Bible site.
The image below links to an enlarged version in which I've
made only one
change...
I
extended
the
graphic of the vine branch so that it spans the full width
of the page. This is to answer one of my observations, #10 in
the first list, distinguishing the home page from others.
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.
|
|
|
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." |
|
|
|
Click
for explanation |
|
Hover
for explanation
|
Comments |
|
|
1. |
Logo
in top left, linked to home |
|
Yes. But unlink
it on the home page itself. |
|
|
2. |
Tagline |
|
Yes. "The Word for
Today - FREE Daily Bible Reading" |
|
|
3. |
Welcome
blurb |
|
Yes,
second column below subscribe. |
|
|
4. |
Plain
wording |
|
Yes.
Although not the specific point of this heuristic,
the feature called HyperWord could use a rollover explanation:
"Turns
all
key terms into links so you can click them to do a search
on the term." A technique gaining popularity is to use a
dashed underline to indicate rollover links. |
|
|
5. |
No
'happy talk' |
|
Yes |
|
|
6. |
Concise
wording |
|
Yes |
|
|
7. |
Visited
pages are distinguished by link color-coding |
|
Yes |
|
|
8. |
"Utilities" are
easy to find |
|
Yes |
|
|
9. |
Search
on all pages, with box and button |
|
Yes |
|
|
10. |
"You
Are Here" indicator |
|
No. Early in the
review, this looks like the only theme where some minor
improvement could help... the general "where am I issue."
The site hardly suffers from this issue, though, due to
the nature of the overall structure: a few support pages,
and thousands (?) of 'articles.'
I'll also have to consider adding a heuristic that says:
"Home page is easy to distinguish." This site is so good
at maintaining a simple consistency that it needs something
subtle but distinct that says "I'm the home page, I'm different."
On usabilityInstitute.com I realized I had to make the
resources panel a different color to make that point. Here's
one idea for distinguishing the home page, extending
the
graphic of the vine branch so that it spans the full width
of the page. |
|
|
11. |
Breadcrumbs'
as links |
|
Probably
no point in breadcrumbs, related to comments above, for
You Are Here indicator. Do we call such a site a "long
tail" structure, borrowing on the popular phrase now used
for many phenomena wherein the stragglers comprise the
greater volume than the core items??? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Students and Professional Developers:
Designing a serious software application in a
browser? Don't spend time and money designing the look
and styles... there's more than you think involved!
Instead, use GenericUI,
shareware CSS and artwork that's free for non-commercial
use and indefinite trial use.
|
Do your hands ache after a day at the keyboard??? This review
sponsored by RSIRescue.com ...
Summation & Next Steps
Overall Rating: Strives
/ Survives
/ Thrives
Excellent site, nearly a model of Neilsen-esque simplicity. (Jakob Neilsen
is the world's premier usability pundit. He has risen to prominence on hot
air supplied not by himself but by legions of detractors who feel that his
shrill trumpeting for simplicity implies the banishment of all aesthetics.
But the straw man they're seeing is simply a reflected glare from the
rose coloring of their glasses, not from Neilsen's vision.) Other than relative
text sizes, the few usability observations are probably inconsequential...
the navigation might not be as perfect as needed for an ecommerce site, but
the main thing people are buying here is hope.
(The publisher raised concerns about the
subscription process but I found no serious flaws in it.)
Recommendations:
- Add a site map.
- Make text sizes relative.
- Distinguish the
home page. One idea is extending the
branch graphic across the page.
- Long-term, consider improving the visual depiction, on
the home page, of the major functional area (pages), perhaps
with colored blocks and a little more white space.
- Add a rollover explanation of hyperword. (See above.)
Hope this helps and let
me know what you think,
Jack Bellis, UsabilityInstitute.com
|