Warmest Greetings,

:: Monday, November 11, 2002 ::

Alta Vista - Try Again

Alta Vista has reinvented itself (again) by creating a new interface. The first I noticed is that they removed hyperlink underlines (text decoration). Since it's reliant on CSS, and link hover color and active link colors don't work in Netscape, there's no way to tell what you're supposed to click on unless you're familiar with the web and used to seeing pages that assume you know what's clickable.

It's not accessible to special needs users. No link text, no alt tags, no descriptive file names.

What is a "Search Center"? They don't tell you beforehand these are other websites that are partners with AV. The Careers site took 10 seconds to load with a DSL line. Too slow. These partners will show you THEIR results, not Alta Vista's. To get to AV's Directory results, you have to know to click on "Directory" in the top nav. For those used to the old interface, this will be a surprise at first.

I was very sad for anyone using older versions of Netscape. Alta Vista's http://www.altavista.com/web/default?phcountry=k is a page that lets you pick your country, doesn't render well in any browser, and really has a problem with Netscape 4.7. The list of countries that appears ON TOP of the existing text confused me so much when I first viewed it in MSIE 5.5 that I thought their page was blowing up. I checked it in MSIE 6.0, Netscape 7.0 and realized they intended for that box (called Alta Vista Countries) to be sitting on top of the text, and that the user is supposed to pick their country or "X" out of the box. If you select a country, you're presented with another, smaller box, again placed on top of the existing text (just like the new types of ads that are replacing pop up ads, that literally sit on top of the page, obstructing the user's view of the page content until it's "X'd" off). This smaller box allows you to select the language you want.

If they insist on these boxes, they need to change the color and add some user instructions indicating the page is supposed to look like that and the user is supposed to perform an action. Since the word "Cancel" isn't underlined until moused over, I thought it was a description for what the "OK" button was for. Heck, to cancel, I just "X"d out of the thing...

What a shame their interface doesn't "talk" to users. It assumes they have the latest browser technology, and the user understands what they're seeing within the first 5 seconds. I liked the above the fold approach, lack of ads (until you get to the search results pages), and simplicity (until you get to the search results pages). They assume everyone can read tiny text, and since the older members of the world's population may not be able, they've forced them to get magnifying glasses or don't care if those people leave the site as soon as they get there. Let's see, vision impaired users (I'm not vision impaired but I do get tired of reading tiny text after awhile - even on my own sites!), and special needs users aren't considered by the design team. What kind of marketing data were they fed anyway? For example, is "Moving Services" so important it needs to be on the homepage as a Marketplace, I wondered?

Well, since I was poking around, I soon learned that the links underneath Marketplace ROTATE! Geez, thanks for the user intructions telling me of the possibility of finding more options there, and how to find them if I wanted to! I don't understand the search results from Marketplace. A click on "Adult Education" (not a clearly understood term by the way. Could mean many things...) showed me 5 sites. Huh? AV only has FIVE sites in that category? I doubt it. So were they results from the engine, directory or sponsored? They don't tell you. If I wanted to put a site in the Marketplace, how would I do so? There's no link to users offering any clues.

Nice try AV. Needs user testing. At least they're showing signs of life and not giving up the ship yet.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 11/11/2002 09:50:47 AM

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