We recently launched a large content managed website for TES Aviation Group – a large international, but Wales based aircraft engine management company.

For Matt and myself, it was one of those dream jobs – a fascinating subject, a great group of people and a thoroughly professional and forward looking organisation. One of the highlights of our initial alignment workshops was the tour of their vast facility in Bridgend, south Wales and getting up close to some of the most powerful engines in the world. A schoolboy dream.

We worked through our UX (user experience) processes, spending considerable time talking with the various teams in the organisation, gathering valuable insight into a very complex industry and its own unique set of interactions between client and supplier.

These interviews, combined with alignment sessions with the sales and marketing director and his team, user journey design, process mapping, competitor review and content audit meant we could design the IA (Information Architecture) and wireframe prototype matching the user’s’ needs tightly to TES’s business objectives.

Then our creative and interactive teams were let loose on the look and feel, extending their existing brand into online. The design was then wrapped around our content management system enabling the TES teams to keep their content up to date from anywhere in the world at any time of day or night (these guys travel a lot!).

The site is attracting a lot of industry interest as the analytics are already proving.

We look forward to a long and interesting relationship with TES. It is worth a visit just to see the most amazing (and valuable) coffee table in Wales – made of scrapped titanium aircraft parts.

It has been a crazy few weeks for us. Good crazy though.

We won two major (and fascinating) contracts at the end of August and we are off to London later this week for a kick-off meeting for another big win for a brand new client.

I can’t talk too much about it just yet, but it’s one of those career defining projects that our team will talk about for years to come.

We are incredibly pleased and proud to have won it and look forward to showing you later this year

Nice to be having some decent weather at last too.

“…do too many links in a page to the same destination page make the page harder to use because visitors have to look through more content to find what they’re looking for? For example on the home page we have links to the same destination page in the navigation bar, the content area and the promotional area.”

Some argue that more than one link to the same destination page is just too many, and I agree that if there is more than one link to the same destination page then there needs to be a good, and well considered, reason for this.

However as with many usability and IA questions there is no definitive rule, and the answer depends on many variables…

More than one link is OK but don’t just duplicate your navigation bar

For real priority content and key user tasks we will often make sure that there is more than one link. So say a key business objective is ‘to get more users to sign up’ we may have a link in the navigation bar and a link or a big button in the content area to the sign up form.

The reason we take this approach, having more than one link to core content and key tasks, is that we’ve observed users in the same testing sessions navigate only using the navigation bar and others navigate only by scanning the content area for links and buttons (seeming almost blind to the navigation bars). Therefore the argument is very strong to add more than one link to key tasks on a page.

What we really don’t like to see is a web site where the whole of the navigation bar is repeated in the content area, and worse still some sites where key user goals and call to actions are in the navigation bar, cross promotional navigation area and content area!

That’s why user journeys and listing core tasks / goals is so important, with this understanding we can make sure that on relevant pages we have 2 or potentially 3 ways into that primary business function, on other pages where that specific task is not as important we will have fewer links.

Big buttons help prioritise key tasks and speed up user journeys

The other ‘trick’ we use is pushing key journeys with big buttons, we know big buttons are clicked more often and more quickly, so by making a link really big gives the user a very clear entry point to a key task. It screams to the user ‘this is really important’ and will often out perform a number of smaller links. Of course you can’t super size all your links – just your really core user task(s) on that page.

So on a page non core business functions / ‘non key tasks’ should not be duplicated – instead rely on good Information Architecture.

We find that using trigger words works really well on navigation pages, helping to ensure that the different audience groups understand the IA of the site, grouping and labelling of content.

Thinking of making tweaks and changes?

Before we make fundamental changes we typically we like to get a detailed understanding so we’ll often use a mix of these to help build our knowledge:

• Know where you want your users to go – review your audiences and their key user journeys, look at specific tasks and the IA
• Check analytics to see which links are being clicked on
• Split test if possible (A, B test – try removing duplicate links for a period of time and see what the impact is)
• Do some quick and dirty user testing
• Keep reviewing the site’s aims and business objectives

As you can see this was a really great question and deserved more than a one line answer!

An interesting article on mobile commerce by emarketer.com summarising recent polls in the US on what mobile users would buy via mobile commerce.

In a nutshell:

• Only 7% of online retailers had an m-commerce site in late 2008 (source: Internet Retailer)
• 71% of US adults would purchase via their mobile (source: Harris Interactive)
• 59% were willing to buy pizza online via a phone, 58% movie or event tickets, 43% hotel rooms (source: Harris Interactive)
• But PriceGrabber.com found most popular mobile purchases were digital content (ring tones and music)

See the full article with graphs: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007126

This all makes sense, our observations to date are that mobile users have different (and immediate) goals when using their mobiles on the move rather than when they have a desktop, laptop or net book handy.

Anyone for Pizza?

So what’s navigation page?

Navigation pages are the pages between the home page and the information pages. The aim of navigation pages is to get the user quickly to the information they are looking for.

Most site visitors are on a hunt – they have a goal or task and the navigation page is THE way to get them there quickly (by increasing the scent of information and giving clear links as next steps).

Above: Navigation pages – where they sit in the site hierarchy

From our observations, and other research, people don’t want to read a lot when they are ‘hunting / foraging’ for information. Only when the user has reached the page which screams ‘here’s the information you are looking for’ does the user suddenly turn from information hunting to gathering, they are now ready to feast, read – and devour information!

Some rules of thumb for navigation pages:

• Navigation pages are really table of contents – they give a quick overview of what’s offered and show the user where to go next
• Cut the text – most users won’t read even a paragraph of text on a navigation page, the page needs to tell them what to click on / do without reading
• Links with a short one line of text which includes trigger words / keywords helps
• Images can help too – make sure they add to the users understanding of what is behind the link and are not just ‘eye candy’
• Bullet points work really well
• Marketing messages and copy will be ignored – on navigation pages just make sure user can find the information they are hunting for quickly
• Don’t panic about the “3 click rule” (or rather “3 click myth”), observing users has taught us they are happy to go beyond 3 clicks if these are quick clicks and the information scent is getting stronger
• Don’t make people think on navigation pages – use simple language, bullet points, big obvious links to all speed up navigation

An example of a navigation page we designed for visitwales.co.uk – the aim for users to be able to move to the information they need VERY quickly

Directgov (www.direct.gov.uk) has lots of really good navigation pages, here’s one for Motoring:

Lots of quick links and bullet points making a highly scannable and therefore quick navigation page.

Of course on many bigger sites we have a couple of layers of navigation page, as long as the information scent gets stronger as the user clicks through these they are fast links and get the user to their destination really quickly.

From the motoring page on DirectGov site clicking on “registering a vehicle” takes the user to another navigation page which then goes to the full information page

What about users landing inside the site?

Many users will land directly in your site, maybe on a navigation page so that’s why its important that navigation pages include:

• Site logo, name
• Strapline (make the logo a link to the home page)
• Global navigation device
• Home link
• Site search box if there is one on the site
• Footer and utility navigation devices

Finally users aren’t perfect!

On navigation pages we see uses clicking / choosing the first option that looks like it fits the bill. Therefore when organising the navigation page make sure:

• the ordering of lists and priorities on the page are carefully considered
• the most important information and links are high up the page
• if you want to persuade users to click one link over another put the priority link above the other one

Once you’ve built the navigation pages test them with users against tasks and goals.

For more information on writing for the web this book is great: ‘Letting go of the words – writing for the web’ by Janice (Ginny) Redish

Amazon still will not add the Verified by Visa scheme.

For more information see Graham’s the full article here: http://econsultancy.com/blog/3887-verified-by-visa-a-conversion-rate-killer

Jared Spool (www.uie.com), usability guru suggested a tweak on Amazon; this added an estimated $2.7 billion to Amazon’s revenue. Jared and the team found that products with more than 20 reviews had a much higher sales conversion rate, so by adding a question ‘was this review helpful to you’ and then tweaking the site to place the most relevant reviews at the top, meaning more conversions – a real big winner for Amazon.

See the full article here: http://www.uie.com/articles/magicbehindamazon

I’m sure you’re frustrated when you have to register to actually buy something on an online store which you probably won’t return to? Here’ another example by Jared Spool (www.uie.com) on a different e-commerce store where a minor tweak increased to site’s annual revenue of $300 million per year!

In a nutshell users would have to login and register after they had filled their shopping cart but before they could actually enter delivery and credit card information to pay for their goods – sound familiar?

Jared and his team found that first time shoppers didn’t want to register – they just wanted to pay for the goods quickly and leave, in fact the users tested really resisted registering. Jared and the team also found that repeat customers didn’t find the process helpful either – with 45% of all customers having multiple registrations. The solution was simple, and one that many sites are now taking, remove the register button before the actual check out but add a message:

“You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”

And what about the money?

“The results: The number of customers purchasing went up by 45%. The extra purchases resulted in an extra $15 million the first month. For the first year, the site saw an additional $300,000,000.”

See the full article here: http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button/

Giving exact ROI figures is always going to be more difficult for non transactional sites, but with Google Analytics we can quickly benchmark and show improvements (using metrics such as reduced bounce rate, increased average time on site, increased page views, increased page visits and higher Google Adwords conversions if you are using them).

I’m always great to that sometimes a minor tweak to the user interface, labelling or say the process of filling in a form can make huge differences to the usability and performance of web sites.

The new site features a bunch of little guys called The LeeVs…

LeeVs love nothing better than playing in the wind, chasing each other, racing each other and generally running around having fun together. They enjoy floating down the river, paddling in puddles or cycling around their Regional Park.

The accessible site features extensive use of Flash for interactive games and character animation that really brings the LeeVs to life.

Lucy Hose, the Regional Park’s Marketing Manager, said “The new site has been designed to encourage children to learn through having fun and to find out more about the Regional Park and the environment. We’ll continue to update the pages and youngsters need to keep a look out for competitions which we’ll be running on the pages. My favourite game is Rob the Ranger!”

We pulled out all of the stops to get the site looking fantastic for the youngsters – our illustrators worked very closely with our Flash team and created a whole virtual word for the LeeVs to inhabit. The site features lots of little surprises that delight youngsters.

For example, you’ll be reading about birthday parties in the park and all of a sudden, a little bright blue bug will wander around the screen, or a LeeV will ride his bike right past you and even pop a wheelie for you.

More kid’s sites in the pipeline

We are just about to launch another two sites for young people, a bit closer to home, but we can’t say too much about that yet.

Matt Howard, our Technical Director and Information Architecture guru said “There are a whole different set of usability rules to apply to sites for younger audiences. We have lots of experience designing for children of all ages for clients like Careers Wales, Welsh Assembly Government, DTI and the Mid and South Wales Safety Camera Partnership, so we have learnt a lot along the way”.

“Our illustration team have even been commissioned to design and produce a whole visual language for youngsters with special educational needs (SEN) and this has been so successful it looks like it will be rolled out across Wales and hopefully nationally”.

From a design perspective, designing for kids is just very good fun. Why just have a ‘help’ link when you can have an animated wriggly worm pointing the way!

So What Are Mega Drop-Downs?

They are those big, chunky, typically 2 column drop-down panels which group navigation options, use typography, icons and tool tips to provide the user with links to content within a section of the site – meaning everything is visible at once with no scrolling.

Mega Drop-Downs vs. Regular Drop-Downs

The bottom line is that regular drop-down menus have many usability problems, but the mega drop-downs from usability studies have overcome the limitations.

Things to Think About When Considering Mega Drop-Downs

• Speed of the mega drop-downs is critical
• Grouping of related options
• Using descriptive labels
• Labels should be a medium level of granularity – and act as trigger words

Finally, it’s important to test the drop-downs, make sure they don’t obscure other key navigation devices (particularly search) and understand accessibility issues for assertive technologies and mobile devices.

Source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-dropdown-menus.html

The guys at arc90 have taken this idea and produced a simple bookmarklet that sits in your bookmarks bar, with the aim of making almost any web page ‘readable’ with just one click. It doesn’t work with every website, as it has to try and work out where the main content of a page is, and some sites prove a bit too tricky. When it does work, it’s great for pages that I’m finding difficult to read, but don’t want to add to my Instapaper queue.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For those times when you just can’t focus on that web page for very long, this is a really useful little tool.

You can get the bookmarklet here: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ (you can also customize it to your needs), and read arc90’s blog entry about it here: http://lab.arc90.com/2009/03/readability.php.