Web Usability - Specific Issues - Accessability
First - More on Usability:
Eg1:Offermatica claim to be "the leader in website marketing tools and services" and claim that their service can add millions to revenues for online companies.
The aim of this company is to turn visitors into customers. A worthy aim but not entirely relevant to all websites. After all, much of the 'net is about information. The service Offermatica offer seems to be mainly about an effective way to allow designers to make subtle changes - then monitor the effect these have.
This sounds rather like 'suck it and see' and would seem to be a good way of working.
NOTE: On a personal level I did something similar. I checked the web access logs my ISP creates to see which pages visitors were looking at. I them modified the navigation 'bar' (created a nifty FLASH graphic that served the purpose). Two weeks later I checked the logs again and noted a very obvious increase in the number of visitors accessing ALL pages (as opposed to looking just at the first one or two).
Eg2:Vincent Flanders Web pages that suck! Sorry - I think the layout of his page does rather (suck that is!). However, his site is one of the few that are not immediately commercial (ie. trying to sell you a service to 'improve' your website). His ideas are mainly quite personal - the one he rants about most is what he calls MMN (mystery meat navigation) ie. Graphics that change to words/links when you 'mouse over'.
Interestingly, this example is cited by Flanders as a 'bad' case of 'mystery meat' and poor text contrast. If you look at it now there are some fairly obvious changes. Perhaps they listened to him!!
posted by Ric @ 10:16 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
OK - Here's a real giggle! Spring Digital. These folk claim to be an 'award winning design agency' and guess what - it's all there, mystery meat, flash animations that take ages to load and run, distracting 'busy' layout - you name it they do it! Yet they win awards??!!
It's probably been said before but this organisation claim to be able to test pages for 'accessability' issues. However, I ran their 'scanner' on a site I developed for a client kidderminster nights and it turns out not so much to be about accessbility and usability. That is - they scan for things like clicking behaviour and exit points from the site. Once again they are the thin end for a commercial wedge - watchfire - a useful utility that allows a designer to monitor visitor behaviour.
WebXACT - I explored their service further and found some rather more useful points. These related to my website as follows:
1. P1 - Provide alternative content for objects. On my site this fails due to my use of a FLASH object as navigation.
2. P2 - Use of absolute positioning rather than relative positioning. I am aware of this. I designed the site before really learning anything about CSS. I intend to 'CSS' the site asap to improve 'viewability' in different browsers at varying screen resolutions.
3. P3 - Providing a summary for the content of tables. I am not sure how relevent this is since I used tables only for layout. I can see the point of this though. Part two of this was that I failed to specify the language of the page using ISO 639 language codes. This apparently helps automatic translation software do its work.
Very interesting. Obviously some changes are needed. I recommend Watchfire!!
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