USEworthy Special Edition
The monthly Newsletter from The Usability Company
Welcome to the Season Special edition of USEworthy. In this issue, we provide highlights from the independent research conducted by The Usability Company together with Eyetracker, the UK's premier commercial eyetracking service, which scientifically details how web users view pages online. The full report is available for download in the Resources section of The Usability Company's website and the findings have already generated a great deal of press coverage and interest.
Paul Blunden, CEO of The Usability Company discusses in great detail the usability aspects of successful site design for online casinos. Paul stresses the importance of putting users at the centre of the development process in order to convert visitors into players and players into profits and also provides some hot tips on how to do this.
In addition, we provide excerpts from an article on accessibility that was featured in the December edition of .net magazine. This article provides an excellent update on the state of accessibility in the UK and worldwide with excerpts from interviews conducted with Marty Carroll, Director of Practice at The Usability Company, Julie Howell, digital policy development officer at RNIB and Bob Reegan, Macromedia's senior product manager for education and government. This is a comprehensive article that includes discussions with a cross section of leaders in the field of accessibility.
The Usability Company News
The Usability Company is launching its Eyetracking Service and has released an independent research paper on Eyetracking which can be downloaded from The Usability Company's website theusabilitycompany.com. For further information on this new service please call Paul Blunden on or email .
The company kicked off this autumn by appointing a new Public Sector Account Manager, Richard Nalliah. Richard, an IT professional, brings many years' experience of the government sector and Managed Services Sales, joining us from LogicaCMG where he sold Managed Services. Prior to this Richard worked with Central Government and Defense clients selling application development and consulting services. The Usability Company is pleased to welcome Richard to the team.
Catriona Campbell, Chairman of The Usability Company was invited to speak at the Scotsoft 2003 Conference for government and industry in Edinburgh November 13. The event, organised by ScotlandIS, was opened by Jim Wallace MSP, Deputy First Minister and Minister for Enterprise, brought together some of the great minds from across the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Industry in Scotland. This year's focus was on collaborating for business, and assembled local and international speakers.
And Finally...
Free Workshop for Government Managers
Getting online is the easy part, but how do government website owners ensure take up of government services?
The Usability Company is holding a free workshop designed to introduce senior public sector managers to the principles behind designing government websites that ensure a valuable user experience and help to maximise customer retention. This workshop will be held December 10, 2003, 9AM -12.15PM at The Lanesborough Hotel, St George's Suite, Hyde Park Corner, London SW1X 7TA.
The Usability Company wishes all our newsletter subscribers and readers the best this season and a very happy and prosperous New Year.
Successful Site Design for Online Casinos
Site design is key for attracting signups, converting those signups to downloads and converting those downloads into deposits. The pitfalls along the path from visitor to player are many and even the most successful sites often miss critical elements in site usability
Traditionally, website development has been design led; that is, the business requirements are interpreted by a designer into a creative that contains the features, functions and attributes the site owner requires. Often presented in a way the site owner defines; these are, in many cases, entrepreneurial led endeavours and consequently the user has not typically been considered in the development process.
This is generally the case in iGaming, where site owners and employees of the organisations are also users. "We know what the gamblers need and how to make the site work for them, we are gamblers ourselves" is the general reaction usability specialists hear when critiquing a gaming site.
SPOTLIGHT: CASINO ON NET (www.888.com)
User behaviours are constantly changing and techniques that worked well in the past may no longer have the same effect. For example 888.com pops up a promotional screen in the top left corner off the home page. Players on a dial-up connection see that frame first, and because of the overuse of pop-up advertisements on the Internet, most users close this window before viewing its contents.
That being the case, an important message wants to be on the homepage, not in the pop-up "Banner blindness" is the phenomenon whereas users don't even see the banner on the page. Alternatively, they see the banner but choose to ignore it.
888.com has a clean, uncluttered homepage that gets users to their goals quickly and efficiently. Research links loyalty to customer satisfaction and there is a high correlation between customer satisfaction and a user's ability to achieve their goals: i.e. intent vs. success. 888.com's simple navigational structure, intuitive content grouping and s straightforward labeling allows you to get to games quickly and easily with a horizontal menu structure providing additional features and functionality for the new or returning user. 888.com does however give a sense that the website was designed for experienced intermediate/hard-core Novices who may want to learn more about the games are not catered for. As online gaming conversion rates are reducing as the acquisition of hard - core gamblers levels out, a greater reliance on novices for new business must be catered for. A good example of catering to the neophyte gambler can be experienced at www.InterCasino.com, where preview movies of most games are available.
Caveat: Designing for the theoretical user is a dangerous approach. It is imperative that the actual user base has an input into the development process.
The goal of 888.com is to get visitors to install their software. Instructions for doing so are commendably simple and easy to follow. Whether or not users understand the download requirements is a different question. A player migrating from sports betting to casino may be unfamiliar with the casino technology formats and may be put off at the thought of download in software if he is not informed of the process. The download at 888.com website takes 10 to 12 minutes on a dial-up connection. Is this a problem? For some users certainly it is. T h e re f o re 888.com wisely offers a no-download version from sister site Reef Club Casino.
When it comes to registration, the process is simple and straightforward. However, there is only one entry box for email address so there is no confirmation, which makes support harder in the future if the address is mistyped.
Additionally, on completion of registration, players are issued with a user name and password, which they are required to write down. These details sent by email would make saving this important information a more intuitive process.
Depositing is simple although I suspect a high abandonment rate as users are told that the minimum deposit is $50, the user isn't told this until after trying to deposit less that $50.
"Can I never let my balance go below $50, and if so what are 888.com doing with my money?" Comments like this pop up in usability tests all the time, and a lack of information is usually a bigger problem than the minimum deposit amount.
TEN THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN DEVELOPING YOUR CASINO WEBSITE:
1) Know who your users are. If you don't know, find out. DO NOT assume.
2) Put your users at the centre of your development process.
3) Keep things simple. Use language that is easily understood. "Java site loading" means nothing to my mom, and she gambles online.
4) Get the simple stuff right. There is no excuse for processes not working.
5) Don't assume that because you can use your site everyone else can.
6) Don't trust anyone; test everything for usability, preferably with a specialist.
7) Marry your business goals to those of your user. Where they meet is where the money is.
8) Make sure your page download speeds work for your audience.
9) Don't be complacent about your success. Online player interaction is always evolving.
10) Calculate the ROI from what you do to the site. Know you are adding value.
This article was featured in the October 2003 issue of iGaming Business Magazine.
Eyetracking: The Usability Company report reveals science in how Internet users view pages online
Executive Summary
We all know that web users are time poor and fickle when it comes to visiting sites on the web. We are constantly bombarded by advertising and promotions in all their forms. However, some of these advertisements we attend to while others we don't. Why is that?
The web has been with us for a number of years but up to now there have been very few rules to help designers design sites that support the way we, as consumers, want to use them. Where should design elements - logos, search, and advertisements - appear on a site?
The Usability Company and Eyetracker recently conducted an eyetracking study to determine where people look on a page when they visit a web site. They studied eye movements of people using three well-known newspaper sites - The Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times.
Eyetracking offers information that cannot possibly be obtained by traditional usability testing and market research methodologies. The human brain processes visual information very quickly. When looking at a web page we make subconscious decisions as to the importance of the information viewed within microseconds. If an advert is perceived to be sufficiently interesting then fixations are considerably longer.
Participants in the research were asked to complete a number of very simple tasks on the three sites. These tasks were typical of the kinds of things people would be doing in the real world. For example, the first task they were asked to complete was 'Please go to the Business section of the site'. The order of the sites was rotated to minimise any learning effects.
While using the sites peoples' eye movements were recorded and they were questioned about their impressions of the sites. Each participant completed a questionnaire to determine if they could recall the advertisements on each site.
Key findings
The research has offered some very interesting findings:
People learned very quickly where advertisements were likely to appear on a site and subsequently ignored those areas of the page when browsing. For example, while people viewed the adverts on the right hand side of the Guardian home page they rarely, if ever, looked to the right hand side of subsequent pages on the Guardian site - they had 'learned' that this area was reserved for advertising and therefore not of interest to them. Likewise having seen the banner ad at the top of The Times homepage very few people looked at the banner ad on other pages of the site.
This finding has, of course, repercussions for all those sites that have a template design where advertisements will always be presented in the same position. It would certainly be more effective to alter the positioning of advertising from page to page (or at least section to section) of a site.
When asked to go to one of the main sections of the sites (i.e. business section) participants found the section much faster on The Times and The FT sites compared to the Guardian site. The reasons are twofold: people have learned that a site's main navigation resides more often than not on the left hand side of the page (when asked to find the sites' main sections peoples' eyes went directly to the left hand side of the page) people find it much easier to scan information vertically than horizontally
Advertising positioned within the body of the site has a far greater probability of being recalled than advertising located in the 'traditional' areas for advertising -at the top of the page and to the right hand side.
Not surprisingly people's eyes were drawn to images and to headlines. However, peoples eyes were much more likely to fixate on a line of text rather than a block. This is consistent with the finding in many usability studies that people are reluctant to read online - preferring to scan instead.
People could recall the presence of animated advertising on sites much more than static advertising but the recall of the content of animated advertising was not any better than static advertisements.
While there were variations in the eye movements of people from site to site and even from page to page within each site the following pattern consistently emerged: It appears that people look to the middle of a page initially then towards the area usually inhabited by the logo of the site, followed by the left hand side (where they expect to find the main navigation) before scanning the areas to the right of the page.
The findings have repercussions for site owners. Web site design should be considered less of an art and more of a science with a better understanding of how people view sites driving the design agenda.
Notes:
- The full version of the report, which includes illustrations and data analysis, is available for download in the Resources section of The Usability Company's website.
- You may also email and request a Word version of the report.
- The Eyetracking report has generated much press interest and coverage. To read some of the coverage so far, please go to our press coverage section.
Access all areas
This article was featured in December's issue of .net Magazine (www.netmag.co.uk)
Is your Web site breaking the law? Why should you make it accessible? What changes do you need to make? .net Magazine's Dan Oliver demystifies the confusing world of Web site accessibility
Earlier this year a number of magazines ran an alarmist story claiming that the DRC (Disability Rights Commission) was gathering evidence against hundreds of Web sites with a view to taking legal action under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). The story claimed that those sites that provided a service - and weren't accessible to the disabled - were going to be taken to court and hung out to dry.
Veil of confusion
If it was true, this news would have been unprecedented - but it wasn't. It was simply another veil of confusion that has surrounded the DDA and Web site accessibility in the UK since the start of the new millennium. "There's no doubt that people are confused," says Marty Carroll, director of usability practice at The Usability Company. "One of the reasons is there are so many disparate sources of information and scare mongering going on. We had a case a few weeks ago where a client said the design agency told them they had to adhere to certain guidelines otherwise they'd be prosecuted by the DRC. What the DRC is actually going to do is educate the market about accessibility with some real world examples of where big sites are falling down."
There's a mood among some designers that they're being hunted down by the likes of the DRC and the RNIB (Royal National Institute of the Blind) - the two main groups that will support disabled people that want to make a case against a site. This is, in fact, far from the truth. "The DRC is currently undertaking a formal investigation into Web accessibility," says Julie Howell, digital policy development officer at the RNIB. "Some press said this would be the DRC looking at a 1,000 Web sites and that those found non-compliant would be sued - absolute bunk! That was never the case. The journalist that wrote that grossly misjudged the facts."
The reality is that the DRC is currently investigating 1,000 sites in a number of sectors and actually anonymising them, with a view to publishing the findings at the end of the year. The motivation behind the report is simple - to get site owners to willingly upgrade their pages so they adhere to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT.
Many people, even if they are aware of accessibility law, believe they have until 2004 to ensure their sites comply to the WCAG guidelines, but this is another myth propagated by misinformed reports. "The part of the DDA that applies to services being accessible came into force in October 1999 - there's nothing new about this at all," Howell tells .net. "What I've read in some press is that the date is 2004 when sites must comply - that's just wrong, it's wrong. One person wrote it and everyone else copied it. It's false, it's inaccurate. Sites should be complying now."
Not all Web sites must comply with the guidelines, though. If you're a business, non-profit organisation or Government department offering a 'service' to the 'public' then you are likely to be liable under the DDA. "If you are running a hobby site, for your local club for example, or a personal Web site this is less likely to be considered a 'service' as defined under the terms of the Act," says Howell.
In actuality Web sites could have been prosecuted under the DDA as far back as October 1999 - but it was such a grey area that this would have been very unlikely. It wasn't until February 2002, when the DRC published a Code of Practice to accompany the Act, that Web sites were specifically mentioned (the DRC Code of Practice used an airline ticketing Web site as an example of a 'service'). However, because the DDA is based on case law, it's the responsibility of the disable individual to make a case and to date only two cases have been pursued - both were settled out of court. Without case law, it's not possible to provide a definitive answer for what constitutes a service on the Web, but it's now far easier to take an educated guess.
Other confusion has centred on what site owners must actually do to their sites to make them compliant. The World Wide Web Consortium's guidelines are currently your best bet and ensuring that you meet the Priority 1 specs should count as reasonable adjustment. "The term you'll hear a lot of is reasonable adjustment," says Carroll. "Site owners are required to make reasonable adjustment to their sites to ensure accessibility - the problem is what is reasonable adjustment? I think what you're probably going to see is one or two high-profile organisations being prosecuted. Afterwards you'll see everyone running for cover. The idea of the DRC report is to give everyone a wake up call."
Different disabilities
So what kind of disabilities should you have in mind when designing your site? The DDA doesn't just cover accessibility issues for those people with visual impairments, it covers all disabilities, including cognitive, hearing and motor (arm) disabilities. This has thrown up a number of problems because designing a site for each group requires a very different approach.
Sites for the visually impaired, for instance, need to be narrow and deep - having limited information on each page and lots of layers. A site for the cognitively disabled needs to have as much information as possible on one page so information isn't forgotten. Visually impaired visitors use software called screen readers to view sites and the emphasis should always clearly describe everything with text. On the other hand, a graphical approach provides a richer experience for people with cognitive disabilities.
"Priority 1, for us, contains some things we think are important, and some we see as less important," explains Howell. "We try to deal with real accessibility. This means looking at the WAI guidelines as a whole and applying them to your site. I think people that are visually impaired are probably the group most effected by poor Web design. Designing for cognitive disabilities falls more into the usability camp, with issues such as plain English and consistent navigation."
Despite the different design considerations for separate disabilities, the RNIB is discouraging people to go down a multi-modal route. This is a view supported by Macromedia's senior product manager for education and government, Bob Regan. "It's better to stick to one version of a site because when you create two versions, the one for people with disabilities is never maintained as well, updated as well or funded as well," says Regan. "It becomes what I like to call the accessibility ghetto."
Some people are viewing the new guidelines as a restriction, as another barrier they must negotiate to get their site on the Net, but this is short-sighted (no pun intended) and it's a view that isn't just morally unsound, it's bad business, too. "I think site owners have brushed the accessibility issue under the carpet in the hope it'll just go away," concludes Carroll. "They have other priorities - one company we spoke to said 'accessibility is fine but we have more important things to do'. Designers think the idea of making an accessible site is scary but when you explain that it can be as simple as providing information on links and images, they begin to see that it's not difficult at all."
There are currently 8.6 million people in the UK with disabilities that are not being catered for by online 'service providers'. The organisations that could take legal action against sites are, in reality, far more interested in helping designers and site owners do the right thing. "If people ignore accessibility they're turning their back on potential customers, they're contributing to a world that isn't very nice to live in and they're leaving themselves open to prosecution," says Howell. "If it's a pain in the arse to implement change we want to know why? We will gladly work with the DRC when they produce their guidelines at the end of the year to produce tools that ease the burden for Web designers. Taking legal action is the last thing we want."
Macromedia's Bob Regan is also adamant that it shouldn't just be a financial decision to make your site comply with accessibility guidelines. "If you think about how hard it is for a blind person to get on a bus, get to the bank, have people read for them - they're constantly relying on other people," says Regan. "For all the fear that drives this, there should be some comfort in knowing that it makes a huge difference to millions of people."
Source: Article by Dan Oliver of .net Magazine. Visit the.net Magazine website by clicking through the following link www.netmag.co.uk.
For more information on accessibility please read the four part series on accessibility in the November 2002 -February 2003 editions of USEworthy which you can find by clicking through the following link to the USEworthy archive section of this website . You may also wish to visit the following websites:
- RNIB www.rnib.org.uk. The Usability Company in collaboration with RNIB offer an alternative route to acquiring RNIB's See It Right Accessibility logo which is the only independent assessment of website accessibility.
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