Author: Douglas K. van Duyne, Principal, Naviscent LLC
(Editor's note: Douglas van Duyne is a principal at Naviscent LLC, which recently partnered with Oracle in the design of future Applications user interfaces, and is lead author of The Design of Sites (2003). I invited Doug to contribute a multipart blog describing the process he uses to design the user experience. This is the second of three blogs which will appear monthly in this space.)
We continue with design principles to make Web sites easier to use. Our first principle was to make Web sites consistent, in terms of architecture, interaction, appearance, and terminology. Our second, third, and fourth principles involved:
offering informative feedback, recognition vs. recall, and error recovery. Our fifth, sixth, and seventh principles are discussed here.
5. Support Customer Control and Freedom
Customers may come to your Web site for many reasons – for information, products, or activities, for example. One customer may know exactly what she is looking for, while another may have only a vague notion of what she wants and will browse the site to see what catches her eye. Make sure that you build easy exits into your design for people who like to browse. For example, include undo and redo options for mistaken choices or breadcrumbs that demonstrate the user’s current location, as shown in the following example.
The area at the top of this Web page enclosed by the dashed line shows location breadcrumbs, which identify where customers are on the Web site. Breadcrumbs also provide a quick way of backtracking to previously viewed pages.
Give customers the impression that they aren’t being forced to follow a fixed path and that their actions determine the site’s responses. You can achieve this impression by providing multiple ways to navigate the Web site.
• Impulse and Intention Drive Customers to Act – Understand what drives your customers to take particular actions online. Your customers may come to your site for a specific task, or just to look around. Once at your Web site, customers may navigate based on things that grab their interest. These observations indicate two things that drive customers to action: impulse and intention. Build these two actions into your Web site design. A Web site that doesn’t include intention-based navigation might feel a bit quirky, and a site that omits impulse-based navigation might be perceived as boring.
Two kinds of motivation drive customers to act: intention and impulse. Your customers’ histories and attitudes form their goals and triggers, from which they take action and assess their satisfaction. This experience feeds back into their histories and starts the loop all over again.
• Different Motivations Lead to Different Styles of Navigation – Utilize common navigational methods to make your Web site feel familiar to the customers who visit. Include methods such as searching, browsing, and wizard-style navigation for customers who are looking for specific items. For customers who are impulse buyers, include links to featured products and links to cross-sell items.
• Put Tools Where Customers Will Find and Use Them – Upon opening a Web site, customers want to quickly find the links that will enable them to achieve their goals. Place the searching and browsing tools near the point where customers will begin reading (usually near the top right of the page), so that they are not forced to scroll to find them. This location will help customers find and use the tools. Place impulse navigation tools at the bottom of the page, or in a lower position on the right side of the page.
By giving your visitors multiple ways to navigate on your site, depending on their goals and desires, you can keep them engaged.
6. Help Frequent Customers Use Accelerators
Frequent customers to Web sites have come to expect keyboard shortcuts that support common actions automatically. For example, you might design your Web site to support the storage of customer information, such as shipping addresses, and use predictive input to save customers from retyping the same information each time they return to a page.
Predictive input improves speed and accuracy of data input and is a great tool to use with forms to encourage people to complete them. You can implement predictive input in several ways.
• Provide basic predictive input when typing within a pick list – This is a common method. Rather than scroll through a long list of options to make a selection, the customer types a letter and the list jumps to the first option beginning with that letter.
• Use predictive text input to help speed entry – This method uses automatic suggestions to help reduce the typing required for a customer to complete a form. The customer can choose one of the predefined options in a list or can begin typing an entry to reduce the list to the options beginning with the specified text.
• Load predictive text input with the page –The site designer can supply preloaded options, or the browser software can compile predictive text from customer responses to the same questions on previous visits and then store those responses in a cookie.
• Provide multiple selection methods – This method enables customers to select an option from a pick list using either the keyboard or the mouse. However, make sure that you include control over the function of the Enter key when designing such a page. You must decide whether you want the Enter key to insert the selected option into the field, or submit the entire form to the server.
Predictive input makes it more likely that your customers will complete forms quickly and accurately.
7. Strive for Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
Too many graphics and irrelevant information can make a Web site look cluttered and might be confusing to the customer. Clean aesthetics make the customers’ experiences more enjoyable. Web designers often overuse visual elements. If taking out a specific element causes no harm to the Web site, then remove the element from your Web pages. Every unnecessary element detracts from the elements that are important.
One Final Note
These seven principles sometimes conflict with one another. Use your best judgment to resolve these issues. There are instances where restricting control and freedom can help customers to complete their intended tasks. However, be judicious in using these types of restrictions to prevent customer frustration.
Reference:
Van Duyne, D.K, Landay, J.A, and Hong, J.I. (2003) The Design of Sites. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
