Web usability is the ease of using a website. The presentation of information in the website must be in clear and concise way which is also appropriate for all ages and both genders. It identifies the specific design of the web to meet user’s expectation such as consistency across the website in page layout, navigation and web content. The quality components of usability are usefulness, efficiency, effectiveness, learnability, accessibility and satisfaction. Utility is one of the key attributes that are also important which refers to design functionality, does the needs of a user.
Usability and utility are both equally important and together they determine the usefulness of an element in web. Utility is to determine whether the website provides the feature you need. Usability is the ease and pleasant of using the features provided.
Usability is a necessary condition for website survival, if the website is hard to use people will leave. If the website is not user friendly and the homepage fails to clearly state information about the company and the use of user are able to perform in the site is good site. “The first law of e-commerce is that if users cannot find product, they cannot buy it either”, (Nielsen, 2012). It is also a concern in usability that marketers because positive or negative, potential impact, on marketing metrics such as conversion rates, which turn affect to profit.
Purpose, goal and objective
The purpose of this web usability test practice is to determine the disadvantages and error that website might encounter, then to improve the website to serve a well functioning and better browsing experience to the users. This assignment is to design to expose and achieve the implementation and design of usability tes...
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...counter while purchasing goods?
• How easily user navigates around the site?
• How do the users feel about the error of a link or function?
Both performance and preference data were collected for the test sessions.
Performance:
• Error of commission
• Error of omission
• Number of task completed
Preference:
• Ease of learning the site
• Ease of accessibility
• Usefulness of the site
• Appropriateness of site functions to user tasks
The measures show that the importance of the site to be improved is the check out button that is not working. This will affect the purpose of the site which is online business, to enable user to purchase online. The site also needs to improve on a search engine to ease the user’s search for products. The site needs to include currency converter and to support various languages. Stated postage free and delivery method are also important.
Web sites are just like magazines, newspapers, brochures, menus, or even directions on how to make nitroglycerin from house-hold goods, in that they all have to be put together in such a manner that whoever is reading or browsing over it will be able to clearly distinguish this from that. In this sense, a critique of any particular web site will have justification, while carefully considering also that this is an altogether new medium of information exchange. Now, all of this talk of togetherness is actually a general reference to basic design principles, such as color coordination, if color is used, text size, font choice/ style, art integration, accessibility, and just plain and simple design of the page. For example, it wouldn't be all that appealing to the eyeball if a page being viewed had all the text jumbled up in a corner, so small your eyes were bleeding by the time you figured out that it wasn't even worth the trouble. Darn. It's important to rememeber, especially these days, that what you read is as important as how it looks. Have you ever tried reading an interview in a Raygun magazine? Kinda hard, right? Design totally for its own sake is nice, as art that is, and admittedly it looks cool. However, it's two in the morning and you're standing in line at the corner 7-11 trying to pay for your 40 ounce bottle of Kool-Aid, and you happen to see that your favorite MTV Pearl Crap-clone band is on the cover of this hip magazine and you go to read it, but you can't. It's not because to you failed elementary school three times in two years, but because the maestro in charge decided to get fancy with it and thought it'd be cool if he hid the text under a black box or likewise photograph. I like to loo...
The design adopted in the development of a website is a major factor that determines if the website meets its mandate or not. The design of a website is what attracts users to the site and even keeps them for prolonged periods of time on the website. This report gives a critique of The Times online website. This site can be categorized as an informative site. The mandate of this site is to provide information to users on a broad category of topics. These include sports, general news, community events, entertainment, classifieds among other categories of information. The critique presented in this report focuses on a number of aspects of website design. These aspects include searchability, navigation, design, interactivity and the content on the website. The findings are as discussed in the sections that follow.
Usability is a critical portion of web design that one must be ever mindful of when constructing websites. Whether creating a personal web space or building multiple pages for a large corporation, it is the burden of the designer to guarantee people can access that content. According to the United Nations, disabled people compose roughly 10 percent of the world’s population (United Nations, 2010). Many regulations and standards have been set forth to provide disabled people with the same opportunities to access content available on the World Wide Web, as it is most of the World’s population.
There are five different criteria that should always be met when it comes to evaluating a website. These criteria’s include accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage (“Criteria Used in Evaluating Web Resources”, 2014). Accuracy is deciphering who is hosting the website, if the website has stated the purpose and audience, and if the information on the site is reliable. A good way to check if the information can be trusted is to compare the facts found on the website with other information and facts found from other internet or print sources. Authority is verifying that the author of the website is real, because if the author is real then the information can usually be trusted as well (“Criteria Used in Evaluating Web Resources”, 2014). To check the authority of a site, the page should be examined for information about the author, note if anyone else has contributed to the website, check for contact information, and see if the author has created other websites with factual information. It is a good sign if there is contact information for the author, because it means someone is taking credit for the information on the page (“Criteria Used in Evaluating Web Resources”, 2014). If someone is taking credit, there is a better chance that the information can be trusted because the author would not want a bad reputation and to be held accountable for sharing false information. The objectivity of a website is deciding if the website is trying to sway the reader’s opinion, and if it is biased. If the advertisements on the site are being supplied by the author of the site, then there is a good chance the page is biased. There should be no bias or opinion located on a site that is supposed to supply factual information (“Criter...
Johnson, T. (2011). S.P.I.D.E.R. A strategy for evaluating websites. Library Media Connection, 29(6), 58-59. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.devry.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=a1fe208a-6fb8-4e68-8191-7ef041e2d483%40sessionmgr111&vid=25&hid=113
Next is in terms of the design and aesthetics. Layout that being used for this website is a plain white which easier people to read the text that is in black, in contrast and suitable for the concept of showroom online. The font is also suits which is not too big and not too small to be read by people. To highlight the main subject or the main product, the font is being bold to alert customers that they choose the right one. There is no audio available for this website or even a video. But somehow, as it was a home furnishing website, most of the pictures being used by the website is in JPEG format to deliver a clear view of the products to customers.
The first thing most notable about this website was their sense of design. A black ebony background illuminated with old brush style text and decorative graphics, welcomes and invites the visitor to “Enter” their website. This particular idea is a very artistic way of getting people to interact with their website. It is studied that most people learn better by hands on interaction, instead of reading perhaps plain, boring text. The website is appealing and fairly easy to navigate within the various browsers....
As indicated, usability is the ability of a user to find the information he/she seeks, process the information, and perform whatever functions as needed (Eccher, 2015, p. 7). The use of a navigation menu allows the user to peruse the website. There exist four primary pathways by which users are able to navigate a website: use of hyperlinks, streamline the navigation bar, keep sidebars separate, and include footers. Hyperlinks will be examined initially.
UCI Disabilities Services Center. (2003, February 2). Universal design and web accessibility. Retrieved September 17, 2003, fromhttp://www.disability.uci.edu/other_links/web_accessibility.htm
Now that we are living in an ever changing world, technology is viewed as the most resourceful tool in keeping up with the pace. Without the use of technology, communication would be limited to using mail for delivery and encyclopedias for research. Although technology has improved the way we communicate and find information for research, the information is not always valid. Unfortunately, for those of us who use the internet for shopping, research, or reading articles of personal interest the information is not treated the same as a your magazine or book. While such literature is reviewed by an editorial staff, internet literature or information can be published by anyone. In order to reap the full benefit of having the use of technology for any purpose, there are five basic criteria’s one must keep in mind as an evaluating tool for deciding whether or not the particular website is a reliable source for information.
The Internet is rapidly becoming widespread and widely used as a tool for globalization across the world. As the Internet became more easily accessible by most people in the world, the web is bringing significant implications and changes to the way we live, including the way we shop. There is a rapid growth with e-commerce and moving businesses onto the web and retail success is no longer about stores and shopping centers. In developed countries, about two thirds of the population have access to the Internet making the option of online shopping is easily accessible to most people (Valerio). With the ease of shopping in your own home there are many benefits of doing your shopping online. Consumers can easily compare prices online, there is a larger range of products on the web, you can save time by having your shopping delivered right to your doorstep and it also overcomes physical barriers. Over the last decade online shopping has challenged and replaced the traditional means of physically going into shops as the digital world has provided customers with further convenience, flexibility and comfort from shopping from your own home.
The Information revolution is changing our daily lives. With the rapid development of computer and internet, online commerce become quite common and plays an important role in the modern world. The online business has booming development in these few years. US online retail sales raised an average of 11% in the first three months of 2009 (“US Online Sales Up,” 2009). The growth of online sales may due to the growing number of consumers who shop online. In the case of Asia, survey reported 77.6% of Internet users have online shopping experiences in 2003 (as cited in To, Liao & Lin, 2007). Online shopping is very different from traditional shopping. Consumers cannot touch and check the product before purchasing it, which means they are at higher risk of fraud than traditional shopping. Consumers also have other concerns such as credit cards security of online shopping. Then questions should be raised: what is the advantage of online shopping? Why people shop online? In following paragraphs, the advantage of online shopping for the consumer and consumer’s motivation to shop online will be reviewed and discussed.
In today’s era “INTERNET” is playing a significant role in our daily life. People can walk through the internet to one who is actually living on the different side of the planet, can send mails round the clock, search information & even buy things online. With this invention of internet there is a shift in traditional way of shopping. Now there is no need to open a physical store. One can be active at any time and place and purchase products and services. The number of users of internet is increasing day by day which means that online shopping is increasing. Various characteristics of online shopping is making it more convenient for the customers, as compared to traditional way of shopping such as the ability to view and purchase goods and
Gain insight into how customers use the website so that we can make improvements to its usability..
The high take-up of the Internet leads to variety of opportunities in front of companies. People are more online than ever. They spend many hours each day on Social Networks such as Facebook and Google+. It is no wonder that buying and selling can now be done in a more convenient way. Although traditional shopping is still thriving, online shopping can be an alternative for people wanting to save time and money. If a certain customer plan to go shopping, it could be stressful and also be time consuming. E-business has made shopping or any kind of transactions online much easier and convenient. It introduces new facilities, opportunities and way of shopping for both vendors and customers.