Usability on Internet Marketing Research

**John Scott** · 10-17-2003, 04:34 AM

http://www.v7n.com/

What should I be doing to increase usability?

Coffeee™ · 10-17-2003, 04:41 AM

Your site design looks terrible on Opera. The tables are messed up :'(..

-RB

**John Scott** · 10-17-2003, 04:48 AM

That's what you get for using a weird broswer.

Coffeee™ · 10-17-2003, 04:50 AM

It's not a weird browser :'(. It's an awesome browser.

I can take some screenshots if you like

-Rabid Bird

**John Scott** · 10-17-2003, 04:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rabid Bird

I can take some screenshots if you like

-Rabid Bird

Please do.

Coffeee™ · 10-17-2003, 04:56 AM

Ok hold on I will do it in a bit

-Rabid Bird

**LazyJim** · 10-17-2003, 05:25 AM

It is already very good.

One very useful feature of site with a lot of information - like this site - is a search facility.
Don't forget the search facility also has to be usable in itself, because if it can't be used, it may as well be removed.

Ricoool · 10-17-2003, 02:42 PM

@ JohnScott

it looks funny in Opera ---> http://www.cybernation.dk/fun/imr_opera_v711.gif
like Rabid Bird wrote

Cibok · 10-18-2003, 12:47 AM

Thats not very bad.. atleast you can see the links and content

**John Scott** · 10-18-2003, 01:55 AM

Anybody want to pinpoint where the scripting went wrong?

Coffeee™ · 10-18-2003, 02:10 AM

Nope normally Juggo is good at this

UKZJ007 · 10-22-2003, 03:28 AM

The Nav. Is good.

Coffeee™ · 10-23-2003, 06:21 AM

Juggo doesn't do stuff for free and it's more handy that you contact him

**John Scott** · 10-23-2003, 09:39 AM

How about the navigation on IMR? Good, bad, otherwise?

SVB · 10-23-2003, 09:42 AM

The navigation is perfect, It should all be about instant usuability, and I could use it easily first time round.

**LazyJim** · 10-23-2003, 10:09 AM

I think the colours on the menu should have more meaning, and could be used on the content pages to remeber where you are.
This would also help where pages are cross linked, e.g. if you follow a link from the right-hand column, and it goes to a different section of the site, the colour changing to indicate that would help a lot.
If the colours on the menu relate to the colour of the content pages, user's can get back to the page another day, because if the remember what colour it was, they can click that colour menu button, which is easier to remember subconciously than the text of the menu.

Sorting the information into manageable sized sections that would be logical to users (not just to your self who knows the topics more intimately) should be done early on. This is 'information architecture', and will give you a base on which to design the site and interface. I think this is important for an information-rich site such as yours.

You have a lot of information, if I came to IMR plannig on working my way through the site, then I may just take each topic as it comes, but it would be hard to work out whether I had seen it all when I get to the end.
If I came to IMR (either for the first time, or even after reading it though), and was looking for advice on a particular thing, I would have to traul through a whole load of headings and different pages of headings. Apart from not knowing which pages to look on, it could take ages to find the right content.
So all I need is a search box, type in the thing I want to learn about, and see the relevant topics listed in the seearch results.
Same for glossary, - but at least the glossary is ordered alphabetically, the rest of the site seems to have some order, but means nothing to me, and probably not any other IMR novices.

hughitt1 · 10-25-2003, 02:13 PM

Hey, i havn't had the chance to take a thourough look yet, i'll try to later, but from glancing at your source here is a few sugguestions to consider.

1) Although you have alt attribs in all your images, its helpful to put a logical description in all the images, so that way if its a background image, or a button, or whatever, a person using a screen reader will know exactly what the image is.

2) Try to avoid using elements for things that they are not intended to be used for. This one is really hard... I mean really hard. This would mean finding another way to layout your site without using tables. One alternative is to use css. Although this is a good alternative, it is very hard to get it to display properly across different browsers and browser versions (not to mention different OS's). It is possible however,. i was hoping to post a link of one case study of it being done (for webreference.com) but i wasn't able to find it at the moment. This will take a lot more time to do however if you wanted to, and alot of reading up.

3) One more thing i recall which helps accessability at least, is having a link (using a 1x1 transparents image or such) at the top of the screen which helps people who are using screen reader skip over the menu. That way that will not have to go through every menu item each time they go to a page.

I'll try and take a look later and see if i can find anything else.
one more thing which i know i've mentioned in about every other post of mine (but which i think is important) is try and use scalable texts where possible. This means when you define your font properties, for text that can be resized and not mess up other parts of the site, use % or em or "size" instead of px, or pt.

Keith

**LazyJim** · 10-25-2003, 02:36 PM

Hi Kieth,
I love scalable text too!
Great idea to only use tags for their intended use, also I would recommend not using hacks such as the transparent 1px. There are btter ways to help text-reader navigation. Try a <a name="content"> where you want to skip to, and a <a href="#content style="display: none;"> where you want to give them the option to skip. I can't say if this works or not, but I hear that many text-readers can skip through all the <h1> and <h2> etc, and only read the content if they want to.

**John Scott** · 10-25-2003, 02:38 PM

Thanks for the imput guys. I'll definately be making some changes.