Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) approached us with a web site in the final stages of development.

At this point in time the EPA had a reasonable investment in the new web site.  As one would expect, this was not without some reasonable level of expectation that the site would meet all the level of it’s requirements of the EPA, their stakeholders and customers.

We were commissioned to conduct a resource efficient and timely review of the upcoming site. We focused beyond the expert stakeholders of the EPA, into their general customer base.  Looking at the usability and overall customer experience revolving around a number of goal based scenarios.

Client:

Environmental Protection Authority

Industry:

Government

Project Focus:

Usability

The outcome of this review was a report outlining a number of usability issues that reflected on the customer experience  using the new web site.  These issues were outlined in terms of impact of severity and budgetary estimates to overcome.

This type of project is an excellent example of where a timely customer experience and  usability review of a web site can leverage a major benefit in terms of correcting issues before the site is launched.

Skills Used

• User Research
• Usability Audit
• User Experience Analysis

Please note radharc was not responsible for the overall visual or interactive design of the forth coming Environmental Protection Authority web site. We solely were commissioned to assist with usability aspects of the web site.

However the reality you have to ask yourself is, are these features going to help my customer, are they really going to help the business.

I have found time and time again over the years that people are obsessed with having a list of features or specifications that they must have implemented on their web site.

We have found that when we have stepped in and aligned the feature list with the customer and business goals it is then that the list becomes a little meaningless.   After all if a feature isn’t serving a purpose for the business or your customer, you really have to question why it is there at all.

Still there is some core functionality for any web site  that  will return a benefit for the business, this is a given.  These are usually  elements such of online forms, shopping carts, search facilities and the like.

So when you draw up that list of “must have features” have a good think about them, do your customers want them too.

Ideally you shouldn’t be focusing on the features anyway but the process and the things your customers want to achieve on your web site.  Knowing this will lead you to the real feature list with real customer and business  benefits.

On top of all this is there is the constant reminder that your content has to be just right for your customers and Google (for all that SEO goodness).   And then you have to ensure that your site is usable for your potential customers as well.  It’s a lot to take on.

You may not have known, but in Australia it is an offence for certain industries and providers not to have accessible websites under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.

What does this mean.   Simply put your website should be easy to access by everyone.  That includes people with long or short term disabilities and older people.  The Disability Discrimination Act is administered by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

The  Australian Human Rights Commission state that requirement for equal access is extended to:

“…any individual or organisation developing a Worldwide Web page in Australia, or placing or maintaining a Web page on an Australian server. This includes pages developed or maintained for purposes relating to employment; education; provision of services including professional services, banking, insurance or financial services, entertainment or recreation, telecommunications services, public transport services, or government services; sale or rental of real estate; sport; activities of voluntary associations; or administration of Commonwealth laws or programs.”

In Australia we have a series of international guidelines (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) that have been accepted by the federal government as the baseline standard for accessible web sites.  These documents are technical documents aimed at people in the web industry.   However as a business owner you have to be aware of the requirements of Disability Discrimination Act in relation to accessibility and web sites.

These guidelines work around 4 principles:

• Principle 1 Perceivable

  Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.

• Principle 2 Operable

  User interface components and navigation must be operable.

• Principle 3 Understandable

  Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable.

• Principle 4 Robust

  Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Each of these principles is broken down into 12 overall guidelines, which are in turn broken down into a checkpoints (61 in all).   Now as a business owner you can rate the success of the accessibility of your site verses these checkpoints into three ratings:

• Single-A – the most basic level of accessibility success criteria
• Double-A – the intermediate level of accessibility success criteria
• Triple-A – the highest level of accessibility success criteria

Now if you are familiar with web accessibility you may be thinking these success criteria are the  same as the checkpoints previous version of these guidelines (WCAG 1), they are not.

I suggest you make yourself very familiar with how to meet them the new success criteria.

Testing for Accessibility Compliance.

Now if your web design and development team have been following industry best practice over the years and are up to date  in their techniques and have developed your site using web standards, then you will have most of your accessibility issues solved.   Note I said most, not all.  There will be outstanding issues.

You can address them by getting  your web design and development team to conduct an accessibility audit of your site. Or have your site tested by real people with disabilities to see if you have any accessibility issues.  The important thing is to not do it yourself, as you are not your customer.

If they aren’t in control, then they are going to feel like they are being rail-roaded, forced to make a decision, and have that horrible out of control feeling. We have all had it. The feeling of being not in control, when things are being dictated to us. We all know that it’s not pleasant. We hate it personally, and will avoid it.

The same concept applies to a web site.

People using a web site must have control, they must be able to direct their own actions, be allowed to make their own choices. Be allowed to leave when they want to on their terms. No trickery, no forcing them or harassing them with adverts or half truths just so they will sign up. Everything on a web site must be such that the visitor can make their own informed choices.

For example this means – no links that say they are going to one part of site, when they in fact go elsewhere. Or forms that force a person to hand over private details (so you can market to them) for information that you where going to give-away anyway.

This degree of control can also be as simple as the tone of the labels on your links and the navigation on your web site, or even just the voice of the content projects. You see people want to tell a web site what to do, not have the web site tell them what to do. We are fussy like that, we like to be in control of the interfaces that we use.

This concept of not being able to control the customer on the web, can sometimes be difficult to consider. In terms of old school marketing, the customer is there to be captured, told what they want and dictated to. Okay maybe not that simply, but still some businesses have the believe that they are in control seat with the customer along for the ride.

Sorry, the web doesn’t work that way, web site owners are not in control. The visitors are in control. It’s a simple factor.

If the visitors don’t like the over all experience they are having on your site they will leave or just never return.

Now as you know the user experience that a visitor has is more than just how pretty the site looks, or how usable it is (the usability), or how easy it is to find information (the Information architecture), or if the site meets the visitors expectations, its about the sum of all these things.

Of course you’ll never know if your visitors are having a good experience or feel that they are in control, unless you ask them.

Maybe you still do things this way.  Nothing wrong with that, especially if you aren’t constantly online.

Working in the online world, I often see trends both social and technological well before they go mainstream.  For example, the now common place usage of online shops and social media. This is an advantage you get working in the web industry.

However often things that I consider common place I not always such for the rest of the community.

The world is getting faster. Yes granted, but to different degrees for different people.

Take this point in case.  We need to purchase a consumer good on the weekend.

By using my online social networks and research on various online forums both general and vendor specific  we where able to do all our research and sourcing of  recommendations from contacts and experts within 90 minutes of starting to look for the information.

Two hours later we had the consumer good in the back of our car on the drive home.    What would have taken weeks was now down to a few hours.

However it’s not about the time.  It’s about what we did.

Leveraging the Community

The use of  our online research on forums, looking at the user experiences that people had with their consumer goods.  Looking to the communities for opinions.  Something that is more often than not outside of the control of the manufacturers.  I knew that from these communities I would get a truer opinion, than from the manufacturers.

Now this is something your have to consider if your business is online.  Don’t think old school. You control nothing.

You don’t control your message anymore – the consumer does.

Similarly asking for reviews from my online social network.   These reviews I trust, as I know the people, they are my peers.   These are the testimonials that I know are not hand selected, I trust that they will be unbiased.

The point here is that the social network is MY social network, I control it, not the consumer goods manufacturer.   Interestingly the only manufacturer to contact (spam) me did so 36 hours after the event (I don’t think they get it).

Again the testimonial isn’t controlled by the manufacturer, it’s controlled by me!

Something to think about, the online world and it’s hyper-connectivity is starting to influence us in many different ways.

Things are Changing

Now I know that the average consumer doesn’t operate in this hyper-connected online world that I do.   However consider that this lifestyle  is just around the corner for everyone.

The online social world is now becoming ever important.  Previously having a web site used to be all you need to do online.   The times are changing.  Social media needs to be considered.   Question is are you ready, is your business ready.  Are you prepared to commit resources to it, or not?

I’m not saying rush out and get a Twitter account or a Facebook page.  However you need to be aware of your brands online footprint.

No, not really.

It’s not that I don’t have the experience, design skills, or the details of what they tend to be like.

I just don’t know how they are going to use a web site.

If you say to me that you know your customers and know how they will react to anything on the web site.  I have a major shock for you.

They don’t and will not be thinking the way you do.

The problem is you know your business or organisation inside out.  You have been living and breathing it for years.  However your customers have not.  They often have no idea about your services when they visit your web site.

Sure I can set things in motion, using good design principles and the like. But at the end the day the final decisions on a web site come from people using it.  Not me.

Investing in a web site can be expensive exercise, something you don’t want to gamble on.  Experience, understanding and design skills can only go so far in knowing what an audience may do on a web site.

Still think you know your customers well.  Take a good hard look.   Do you know the emotional state, the motivators, the decision making process, the wants and needs and the previous experience with like products of your last ten customers. Can you write it down for me in detail.

Great thing is when we don’t know this level of detail about our customers, it’s not a problem.  Today web design is more than just about the design, it’s about getting inside the heads of our  customers.   To do this we have range of tools and techniques, a specialist toolbox if you will. We use this to understand your customers and their behaviours and like experience.

This way we can really understand your customers and create a web site that will stand out from your competitors.

However the web is not print – bet you have heard that before.

Designing a web site is more than just a perfect visual design. A design that follows all the principles of good design.   You know all those universal design rules like the:  80/20 rule, affordance, element alignment, closure, colour use, convergence, gutenberg diagram, hick’s Law, iconic representation, mimicry, rule of thirds, signal to noise  and the like.

Well as any experienced designer will tell you, a design can have all these things right.   This will engage to a degree, and look correct, with no off-putting elements.  Yet still it can fail with an audience.   The site can look fantastic visually and have even perfect content.  Still it will just not achieve it’s goals.

What is going wrong?  Is it the designer?  Maybe they just aren’t experienced enough? Or is it something else?

The real issue here is that  the web  itself is interactive.   It can often take more than a good design to bring a web site to life and really engage with a customer.

That said even if you get the interaction design correct a site can still fail.

The reason for this is simple – designers do not have ESP.

We can’t read minds on what the audience wants and needs in terms of the web site design.   All we can do is  take a gamble on the design based on our experience of what has worked in the past and a brief overview (often supplied by the client).

Now you may think that surely the web industry hasn’t been operating with such a hit and miss affair from the last 15 odd years.   Truth is in certain sectors it has.

Realistically lots of things can do wrong.   Such as:

• What if the client has the wrong idea about their customers
• What if it is an industry the designer is not familiar with – after all we can’t know every industry backwards.
• What if the designer is being rushed and just applies a general generic design to the site.

This is where user testing and user research comes in.   As designers we can’t know it all.   We don’t have an encyclopedic  knowledge of the hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes, motivations, desires and such for every person or even audience on the planet.

Sure we may have encountered similar situations in the past, but often for a web site to be truly effective and not waste it’s design and development budget you need to consider it as a unique project and have some form of user research conducted.

This is why we do user research, this is why you too should be considering a little user research in your next project.   Or are you just going to rely on the designers ESP?

That big “e” application that you use to access the web has a number of security flaws that are starting to be widely exploited.  This means when you use an Internet Explorer browser you are in real danger of having your secure information compromised.  So maybe this is a good time to stop using Internet  Explorer and consider the alternatives.

What Else can I Use?

You can use other software besides Internet Explorer, all the alternative browsers listed below have the same functionality as the latest version of Internet Explorer.  In some cases they have even more.

• Chrome
• FireFox
• Opera
• Safari

These alternative browser also the added benefit of following industry best practice and implementing various elements of new technology that may give your business an edge.

Now if you’re using Internet Explorer and the version is below the latest – version 8, then you really should be upgrading anyway.

I know this issue maybe hard for those of you that have your software resources controlled by the IT department, but maybe you should be asking why are you still using an insecure and in some cases out of date browser.

A web strategy is great at narrowing down and focusing a project on its real purpose.

This makes a project more effective. It can limit the scope of work, ensure you are only developing what you need, while giving an overall direction for the design  of the site. This in turn allows your developers to focus on the features you want and you designers to design them.

This may seem like common sense, and mostly it is, but if you don’t give people a direction in which to focus on they will spend a lot of time second guessing what is required, this in turn wastes your time and importantly your budget!

A really good web strategy will slot into your overall business strategy. Again I’m not talking volumes of documentation here, like a simple business strategy a few pages maybe all you need.

You can use a web strategy to:

• Determine how to inform customers about your products and services.
• Identify segments of your audience that require special treatment.
• Determine how to write the content of your website. For example what will work what will not, what information are people interesting in besides the product and services details.
• Determine the key features that will really help with your business and your customers want.
• Determine the ground rules for your web site and how you plan to use it.
• What are the decision making points for your audience in using your products or services.

Building  a Web Strategy

First off you have to work out the objective of the web site. This objective needs to be in plain simple English. It has to communicate the core of the site goal, nothing else. Cut out all the techno babble or biz speak. It’s a board sweeping statement, simple.

Next we have a look at the strategy. The web strategy will determine how you are going to achieve the web site objective.

Basically the strategy looks at the usually three W’s – who, what, and why.

You have to examine who you are talking to in fine detail, no board audience strokes here unless you have a huge budget.

What you want your audience to do, and how you want them to engage with you in the short and longer term.  What are the road blocks that your audience usually encounters that stop them referring to your web site and using your services.

Then there is the why, why do you want your audience to read your website, why use your services over your competitor.

Once you have this base strategy, of a paragraph or so,  you can expand on it and flesh out how you are going to achieve these points, from the board detail down to final functionality.

In doing this you need to find the points of action, the decision tipping points for your audience. These are the places on the website that are critical areas. At these points you need to remove any issues that your audience may have to proceeding with the outcome you want (the site objective).

How far you go on this document from this point is dependent on your budget.

What Do I Do With It?

A web strategy is the kind of document you can always refer to when you have some new wild idea or new content.

Examine does this idea work from my audience, does it fit in the site content structure, does it follow the website objective and the strategy.

It’s at this point if the new idea fails any of these tests you have to question if it is a really good idea.   Beware there is a reaction to say, “well the strategy is wrong or the site structure is wrong”.  Stop!  Think for a minute maybe the new idea is just not suited for the site.

If it serves for nothing else a web strategy reminds you why your web site exists. It helps you keep your site aligned to the core of your business.  It may even stop you wasting your money on a new feature that is really not in your business interests.

The same approaches that are used to build a word processer or a specialised CRM (Customer Relationship Management) should not be used for a website. Look at it from the core view of what they are used for.  Your desktop software is used as a tool to acheive a task. When your website is centered around information – be that the delivery of information as a public service or to sell your products, it s still information at it’s core.

So why consider your website, clearly a marketing and communication tool, to be aligned with general business software productivity tools. Would you consider a marketing report or a white paper to be the same as your accounting system?

No, I didn’t think so. So why your website.

Yes, granted a website is going to need specialised development and design skills. But I wouldn’t be counting on your IT team to have extensive experience with the skill set required. Even the development of a business requirement for a website and the planning that is required is something outside of the scope of the usual IT department. This is mainly due to the multiple disciplinary approach required.

These days, when building most websites there is no need to reinvent the wheel. The modular nature of the web can allow you to string together any functionality that you require and implement a very powerful systems without the need to build anything from scratch. In fact the very way you build a site should not longer be the old school design then develop, but a synergy of the two.

Just consider the nature of your website and what it is for before getting your IT people involved.