Interesting article on the BBC about the increasing importance UX is having on business.
It is a bright Thursday morning and, like millions of people all over the world, I am sitting in front of a computer. Unlike them, however, it is not to work.
Instead, I am a test subject sitting inside a research lab at the London offices of internet giant Google.
Just a quick post to link to an interesting article I read today on A List Apart (on my blogroll).
It was a good reminder of the importance of identifying who your potential users types are going to be. And the differences in how they are going to approach the internet and your site. Children are very different from pensioners, just as adults who use the internet everyday will have different skills and expectations than those who don’t.
I often try and imagine how my mum would approach a site (sorry mum!) to remind myself that nothing is ‘obvious’.
So another thing that I noticed while getting lost on the SLC website, while trying to find information about repayments (see previous post), was that the breadcrumbs at the top of the page don’t make sense on the home page.
As you can see in the above screenshot (click to see full size), the breadcrumbs at the top of the home page say:
Home > Student Loans Company
This would suggest that we are in a sub-section of the site, whereas in fact we’re on the home page. Elsewhere on the site the breadcrumbs are logical. It’s just this one instance. Breadcrumbs are an excellent way of making sure your users don’t get confused as they browse your site, or know where they are when they are linked to a page deep in your site. Just don’t confuse them by having a random, illogical instance!
This is great video about user experience design by Merijn Hos that I found on the etre blog.
So, although I get annual statements from the student loans company, I decided that I should checkout their online offering so I can check my remaining balance when I think of it, instead of when I’m at home and can access my paper statements.
So off I went to Google (where else!?) and put in ‘UK student loans’. That brought up The Student Loans Company. That sounds right so I go to the site.
There looks like lots of useful information on here, but after a few minutes of browsing around I eventually found a link near the bottom of the ‘Contact Us’ page about loan repayments. It turns out that this is a completely separate website (http://www.studentloanrepayment.co.uk).
Two points come immediately to mind:
For now I’m going to accept the two website decision. It smells to me like the classic mistake of organising your website around the company structure, instead of how customers/users view your company.
Instead, for this post, I’m going to look at my second point. I’ve thrown together a quick addition to the site, which would alleviate this issue, whilst keeping consistent with the branding.
You can see that this simple, extra banner of highlighted text at the top of the page clearly leads users to the repayments website. Perhaps an additional link in the left hand menu would also help as many users will scan menus looking for relevant words when on a new, unfamiliar site.
Today’s lesson is to always remember who your website is for. Think of the users…