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Beam Me Back (Some Usability), Scottie  

:: Monday, May 03, 2004 ::

Beam Me Back (Some Usability), Scottie

Do you ever find yourself wishing you could transport yourself back and forth inside a website, and instantly get to where you wanted to go on the first try, as easily as they could travel around in Star Trek? Why do we get so confused about where we are, or whether we went somewhere already? Why are buttons placed in spots your users wouldn't think to put them, and not in places where they would be thoughtfully helpful?

The theme of the following two articles are similar. One sweats the details for ecommerce sites. Another one brings up the virtues of underlined text and why pretty and artistic isn't always helpful. Lastly, Cre8asiteForums has a button usability issue worth testing.

Bryan Eisenberg makes excellent points in his Sweating the Small Stuff. What I especially loved is his suggestion for putting Add to Cart or Buy Now buttons on the enlarged version of a product image. I've seen a few sites do this, and thought it was brilliant usability.

     "Consider, then, the sites that make the cart a component of every page: as you move through the Web site, your cart is always there with you (which makes the "Keep Shopping" issue moot). Staples does it. So does The Vermont Country Store. Imagine how gratifying it can be to see the list of what you've put in, complete with assurances that you aren't necessarily stuck with this stuff. And at any point you can decide to just wheel that cart to the door."

Next, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, May 3, 2004 discusses Change the Color of Visited Links. I also like hover color changes. The effect is similar to pressing a beveled button. As a user, when a button or text link changes when I do something to it, I know it's responding to me. I appreciate the feeling that it "knows" I'm there. This type of communication with users is satisfying and, I believe, helps the user feel more confident about the website as a whole. Jakob writes,

     "Observe carefully, though, and you'll notice that users frequently move in circles. They'll visit the same page multiple times -- not because they want to, but because they don't realize that they've already been there."


On buttons:

At Cre8asiteForums, our Tech Admins added a helpful new feature. Now, members can run a spellcheck on their posts before final submit. But, the new button is directly underneath the post field, to the right side. To Preview or Submit a post, the user must scroll down further on the page. I've always found having to scroll to preview or submit annoying. Now, whenever I write a new post, I tend to try and hit the Spell Checker button to Submit, because it's the button closest to the post, and I'm not in the habit of checking my spelling before posting.

Am I the only user struggling with forum buttons? I decided to do a little user testing and get some feedback from members. This is something I encourage all of my usability clients to do as well. There are always many ways to peform a task. Something in a site's layout may be confusing or frustrating, and how would you know, unless you asked your users for feedback? We did, in User Testing - Button placement

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 5/03/2004 02:00:33 PM

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