Comparing and Contrasting Web Sites in terms of Usability, Layout, Target Audience and Overall Representation - Essay Example

Comparing and Contrasting Two Web Sites in terms of Usability, Layout, Target Audience and Overall Representation Section Number of Instructor Name Date Comparing and Contrasting Two Web Sites in terms of Usability, Layout, Target Audience and Overall Representation In an age when people all over the world are adopting the Internet and the World Wide Web as their primary tool for sourcing information, the importance of websites has increased significantly. It is not only information. With increasing e-Commerce applications, more and more people prefer to buy and sell over the Net. There are innumerable websites out there on almost any subject or theme that one can imagine. A search for information on any subject throws up thousands of websites. The crucial factor is which website the information seeker ultimately zeros in on amongst the multitudes of similar websites. Attracting the potential user or client’s interest, and holding on to it long enough for the client to finally make a meaningful contact or transaction, defines the effectiveness of the website. The effectiveness of a website makes or mars the utility of the site. Effectiveness of a website is determined by website characteristics such as usability, content, layout, relevance to target audience and overall representation. The objective of this paper is to compare and contrast two sample websites from the perspective of the crucial characteristics which determine the effectiveness of websites. To highlight the differences between websites that are highly effective and those which fail to deliver, one of the sample websites selected (http://www.globalaigs.org/) has been identified amongst the ten worst sites of 2006, and the other (http://www.cdc.gov/) has been nominated as one of the top sites of 2006. To keep the playing field level, websites of the same nature and scope has been chosen for the purpose of this study – both are health-related websites with an international work area. http://www.globalaigs.org/ is the website of the Association of International Glaucoma Societies, while http://www.cdc.gov/ is the website of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Loading Time How long do users wait for a website to load. 10 seconds says Jakob Nielsen (1996). If the website does not present itself within the first 10 second of the user click, it is simply ignored, and the user goes on to a different site. The Glaucoma Association website, http://www.globalaigs.org/, takes almost 30 seconds to load on an 8/64 kbps connection. The CDC website, on the other hand, takes 12 seconds, which also exceeds the 10-second limit of user tolerance. Considering the 8 kbps download speed of the connectivity in use, 12 seconds would be fair enough for the user who is used to slow downloads, 30 seconds would certainly be not. Both the sites are in fact slowed down by heavy flash animations. But there is a difference – in the case of the Glaucoma Association website the Flash animation is totally redundant, whereas in the CDC website the animation is used to present the advertisement banner in a very dynamic manner. The advertisements too are related to the general theme of the website. First Impressions A website makes its first impression on a user in not more than 15 seconds after the page loads. The user involuntarily goes through an evaluation process termed ‘scan’ every time he comes up against a new website. The ‘scan’ is used to identify and locate information that could be useful to the user, at first glance. “’The Scan’ is an unconscious process every Web user goes through each time they pull up an unfamiliar Web site. It doesn’t take very long, and if you don’t pass the test within 15 seconds, you’ve lost that user for good.” (Siler Joshua, 2007. The Scan - How Users Evaluate your Website in 15 Seconds. http://bnj.com/2007/05/the-scan-how-users-evaluate-your-website-in-15-seconds/) In the case of the Glaucoma Association site, the first thing that strikes the eye is the glaucoma hymn. Somebody who is looking for information on glaucoma would hardly be looking for a hymn on the disease. It is also very difficult to know what specific information the site could provide. The arbitrary use of frames in the site creates even more confusion. There is no way to find any detail information on the Glaucoma Association itself. On the other hand, the CDC site is very explicit about the content. The information is not only categorized under different heads, each of the categories are further broken down into a lower level of sub-categories so that it is possible to know exactly what kind of information is available on the website. This kind of information classification would make it possible for browsers to identify relevant information within the initial scan period of 15 seconds. The CDC website therefore has the potential to hold on to the user. Usability The concept of usability, which is concerned with making software systems easy to learn and easy to use, has recently gained increased attention with the development and wide diffusion of end-user interactive software applications (Dray 1995, p. 18). Navigation, hyperlink positioning, clear demarcation of advertisement area from content area, use of color codes, continuity in design, updated content, and inclusion of search facility are some of aspects on which the usability of a website depends. With reference to the Glaucoma Association website, the first major problem is the use of frames, and the way these frames have been used. Search engines face difficulties in referencing when frames are used and there are problems in printing and bookmarking. Though there is no vertical scrolling for the homepage as a whole, vertical scrolling is required for the frames. The vertical scroll bars are so indistinct that there is always the possibility of the user overlooking the bars. The flash animation at the center of the Glaucoma Association home page could serve to distract the user. Such moving images exert a very strong pull on the peripheral vision. The same could be said of the figureheads that play a sort of hide-and-seek game at the top left corner of the home page. Both the animations do not serve any other purpose than to distract. The inclusion of the glaucoma hymn can be considered as a fallacy. Even if it had to be included, it could have been done in a less prominent manner. A glaucoma hymn would certainly not be very high on the list of preference of users who are looking for information on the disease of glaucoma. Nor would be the choice of other music that is offered by the site on its home page. Navigating through the Glaucoma Association website is a test of patience. The initial blunder is that the site is not using the conventional blue color for its hyperlinks. The use of yellow for hyperlinks is confusing enough, the use of blue for the heading which is not a hyperlink, makes it worse. There is no color change for visited hyperlinks. There is no way for the user to find out which hyperlinks he has visited and which he has not. There is no consistency in the way the hyperlinks activate. In some cases the links opens up new windows, while in others the new information is presented within the central frame. What is more disorienting is that for the two options of the World Glaucoma Congresses 2005 and 2007, the user is actually taken out of the Glaucoma Association site. There is no ‘back’ button however, but an AIGS link which reverts back to the original scheme of things. Clicking on the World Glaucoma Congress 2005 starts off a sound file which could be the Glaucoma Congress hymn, and there is no way of stopping it! A website without a search facility or a site map is like a rudderless boat. The Glaucoma Association website has neither of the features. Users do not have the option of using any tool to find out the information they require, nor do they have any way of finding out their location in the site. It is like going blind in the glaucoma site. The saving grace of the homepage of the Glaucoma Association website homepage is that it shows when it had been last updated. The title of the page also has the name of the Association along with its abbreviation. That would perhaps make things a little easier for the search engines. The CDC website requires vertical scrolling. This certainly has a negative impact on the usability of the website as far as the initial scan period is concerned. However, the CDC website homepage has enough material to elicit interest from and then hold the user. The structure of the CDC website is not frames based. Therefore, it does not have the usual problems associated with frames. The homepage of the site carries a flash animation which takes some time to load, but once it does so, it rolls like a digital picture display frame with long static pauses in between. This reduces the distracting element of the moving images to a great extent. There are also no irrelevant sound files to irritate the user. The CDC website sticks to the color convention of hyperlinks. The blue links turn purple once visited. The links are very well classified according to the information they lead to. All the links carry the user to user to a new page within the same window. One has to use the back button of the browser to come back to the original page. There are however various options to go back to home. The site uses a home button in all its pages, one can also click on the heading of the site to go back to the homepage. There is a comprehensive search facility on the site which allows the user to search for topics alphabetically also. The top twenty topics that have been viewed are provided separately in the search section for the convenience of the user. The icing on the cake for users of the CDC site is that there are options to increase or decrease the font size according to the requirement of the individual user. This provides a new level of personalization to the site. All said and done, the CDC website scores far above the Glaucoma Association website in terms of usability. The CDC website is much more user friendly and user oriented than the Glaucoma Association website. The CDC website provides the user much more freedom because of its simplicity and clarity in navigation. Purpose of Layout The layout of a website is a very important feature of the website. Every layout has to have a purpose: to present the information in as well organized and as aesthetic a manner as possible. On close examination of the layout of the homepage of the Glaucoma Association website it is found that the entire orientation of the layout tilts towards the glaucoma hymn. The layout fixes maximum priority to the hymn. Although the top horizontal frame carries the name of the organization quite prominently, its importance is displaced by the comparatively smaller area that is accorded to it, and by the flash animations on the page. In the other pages of the website the logo of the organization is a very disturbing element which diffuses the prominence of the content to a great extent. The left vertical frame that contains the hyperlinks is presented in a very haphazard manner. The organization of the hyperlinks leaves much to be desired. Everything is clubbed together. There is simply no classification or categorization of information. Information directly related to the Glaucoma Association is placed at the same hierarchal level as secondary information such as other links. In certain cases, content which should rightly belong to a separate website is presented at the same level as information intrinsic to the Glaucoma Association website. This has happened in the case of the content related to the World Glaucoma Congresses. By contrast, the CDC website is an example of a well-planned layout. The homepage layout basically comprises four columns. Unlike the Glaucoma Association website where a table structure has been used, the CDC website uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to build up the framework. This accords far greater flexibility to the layout. It is evident from the CDC website layout that it is based on the structure of the information itself. The content of the website has first been organized in a hierarchal structure. The layout has then been planned to fit the content hierarchy. This can be seen in both the horizontal and vertical phasing out of the layout. Graphics and colors have been used very effectively and meaningfully in the CDC website. The balance between empty and filled spaces is almost perfect. One very obvious difference between the two websites is the background. That the background is a very import aspect of a website has been proved by the experiments of Yoshie & Shogo (2006) who in the conclusion to their study state: “Results of the experiment … showed that the time evaluation in reading website was affected by the background color of the screen. Some subjective impressions, like fatigue, irritation, devotion, and so on, were also influenced by the background color in reading of website.” Whereas the background of the layout has largely obscured the other elements in the Glaucoma Association website, the white background of the CDC website has been effectively used to project all the objects in the layout. Target Audience The Glaucoma Association Website seems to be uncertain of its target audience. What should have been a site targeted at medical professionals, people suffering from the disease and others associated with treatment technology and campaigns, has lost its focus and diversified into organizational aspects of the World Glaucoma Congress and music. It is an inward-looking site which lays more emphasis on a few of its own members and the organization itself. There is no information whatsoever on glaucoma and the various treatment methodology, technology and campaigns. The quality of the content is poor, and the quantity too meager to justify the site. The CDC website however successfully manages to maintain the fine balance between providing information to the medical professional as well as the layman without intruding into each other’s territory. It has managed to do so by the use of very well-crafted content and probing hyperlinks that guides the user to the level of information required. The CDC website carries itself well as a multi- audience site giving almost equal priority to both categories of users. Website Identity There is continuity in design elements in case of both the websites. This helps in the maintenance of website identity. In the case of the Glaucoma Association website, website identity is however compromised in the case of the World Glaucoma Congress albeit in the other way round. Though the Glaucoma Association and the World Glaucoma Congress are two distinct entities, neither the website nor the layout design distinguishes between the two. The clumsy effort at differentiation with the use of hyperlinks has served to increase the confusion. Overall Representation The overall representation of the Glaucoma Association is below average. It is below the mark in design, layout, content and navigation. Overuse of animation and audio elements has resulted in deterioration of overall site quality. The numerous pictures that are included in the site are not relevant to the main theme of the website. The image of the eye located at the bottom of the left vertical frame is very unpleasing to the eye. The CDC website, on the other hand, leaves a very pleasing impression. It has achieved the perfect balance in design, layout, content and navigation. The fact that the site can be rendered in Spanish prove that special efforts have been put in for user relevancy. To conclude, the CDC website is much superior to the Glaucoma Association website in al aspects of web development technology. The CDC website has been built with the user as the primary focus, whereas the Glaucoma Association website has been developed around the organization itself. That in itself is the basic reason why the CDC website is far more useful and relevant to the user. References 1. Nielsen, J. (1996). Top ten mistakes in web design. Alertbox, http://www.useit.com. 2. Dray, S. M. (1995). The importance of designing usable systems. Interactions 2(1) 18 3. Siler, Joshua, (2007). The Scan - How Users Evaluate your Website in 15 Seconds. http://bnj.com/2007/05/the-scan-how-users-evaluate-your-website-in-15-seconds/ 4. Yoshie, K., & Shogo, S.(2006). Effects of background colors on users experience in reading website. Read More