Website Workshop: Usability


 

Color
Alignment
Link Color and Underlining
Whitespace is your friend!
Download time is important
Make the structure of your site clear!
Writing Text for the Web

Site Structure

Where am I going? Where did I come from? Am I almost done?
I worked on the seeUthere site extensively for over a month. I visited every single page. I can't begin to tell you what the process to design an event page and get it out to potential attendees, although I've done it a few times. I just know that there are a lot of pages in there, and a lot of clicks to get where you need to go, and most of that is guessing.

I can't tell you much about other tasks either, or even come up with a list of all the things that you can do on the seeUthere site. It's messy. I can't see the big picture of what's going on. When I am at a certain step in the process, how do I know where to go next? Save and Continue to what? Am I almost done? What is the next step after this? What else can I do when I am done with this task?

SeeUthere desperately needs a site map. If no one in the company knows what all the pages do and where they link to, how can you expect your customers to be able to figure out what's going on?

Once a site map is in place and the exact structure is known and obvious to employees, then a method of making this is clear and obvious to users should be put in place. Publishing the Site Map would be good. Take a look at a very simple site map here at Beyond Strategy. The best I've ever seen is Adobe's Site Map. They even have an additional Site Index.

I have been thinking about make the process clear on each page without creating special "Process Explanation" pages, or taking up too much room above the fold with lengthy explanations about how the section works. I think the best solution would be a breadcrumb at the top of every page, above the Page Title, that explains the structure/steps involved in the section that they are currently in. Notice that Beyond Strategy also has a breadcrumb on their page, to show where you are and what section you are in.

The problem that I see with this is that the number of different sections might make the Breadcrumb way too long, something like:

MyseeUthere > Create Event > Select Theme > Enter Details > Design Page > etc.

If so, then a Site Map would be the best way to have some sort of reference available to the user. A Site Map set up along the lines of Adobe's would be ideal.

Can you think of any other ways to organize the site for the user?

More reading about global navigation:
Users First: How to Structure Your Website
Structural Navigation
 
 
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