Usability is a crucial factor in any interface design, particularly website design. For any business that uses their website as a means for attracting customers or making sales, making sure that the site is easily understandable, fulfilling the functional purposes and providing for an enjoyable online experience, must be a high priority.
Dr. Jakob Nielsen, a very well known interface usability expert, has come up with 10 main usability heuristics or rules of thumb to abide by. We would like to present these principles to you and provide examples of how they apply to a website design.
1. Visibility of system status.
“The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time”.
This means that at any given moment that a user is interacting with the website, they must be notified of the current status of the process. This principle has several practical applications.
A simple example is an image slider that shows how many images it contains and which one is currently displayed:
On our home page slider, the transparent bar at the bottom displays the content of the slider and the current image
Another case where this applies is progress bars/circles:
a loading circle that displays the progress percentage is more effective than one with a looped animation
2. User Language.
“The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.”
Apart from the possibility of your site being viewed by non-english speakers, in which case multilingual functionality is key, your site has to be easily understandable to an “average Joe”. That means you shouldn’t use too much complicated terminology, especially in the areas of the site that provide common functionality.
Marketing people love to come up with terms, in an attempt to sound original, but it is often recommended to use common terminology, in order to avoid confusion.
Here’s an example of confusing terms found on a homepage of an educational institution’s site:
If you must use an abbreviation, make sure to explain what it stands for, when you first introduce it to the user. This is especially important for first time visitors.
3. Emergency Exit & Undo
“Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo.”
This particularly applies to areas of a site where users are facing some form of a commitment being requested from them. Online shopping carts are a common example:
The Chapters, Indigo online shopping cart provides the option to remove the purchase
4. Consistency and standards
“Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.”
When a piece of functionality is referred to from different areas of the site, it is important that the referrals are using the same term. For instance, if your menu button, containing the information about your company as well as the contact information, is titled “About Us”, then that is the title you should use when directing users to find your contact information. In contrast, if you were to say “find our email in the contact section”, it would be unclear, since there is no such section.
Consistency applies to the visual look of your site as well. That includes color schemes, fonts and themes.
On our site (www.tidal.ca), the color choices are consistent throughout different pages:
This heuristic principle is the easiest to implement, as it can be done on the early stages of your site planning and does not require complicated coding.
5. Error prevention
“Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.”
It is very easy to accidentally close a window or click a button. The consequences can be dramatic if the user is dealing with important data. The simplest solution is the “Are you sure?” warning window:
There will be 5 more heuristics principles coming up, so stay tuned! If you would like us to review your website’s usability, contact us today!
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