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At my work, I am currently working on the company website. The current website (http://www.scmonline.net) is getting very out-of-date, and besides, it looks cheesy and doesn't work in Mozilla. (Or, presumably, anything other than IE).
Before I started working for the company, they had an on-and-off-again volunteer working on building a new website. Fair enough, the content has been updated, and the new design looks more contemporary and works under other browsers. But in useability terms, it has to be the worst thing I've ever seen.
Now, bear in mind that the first question a person asks when coming to a website is either "how can I find what I want?" or "what is there to see here?" In either case, they look around for the main method of navigating the site; whether that's a system of menus, a sequence of descriptive links, or just a big f---off text box.
Now look at that design above. I've numbered in red each of the menus on this page, and it's quite ridiculous.
#1: Is this the main menu bar? Or is it that one across the top? No, it's this one. I think. Well, there's a start. This shows us the main sections of the site, at least... or does it? Different parts of the site show a slightly different choice of sections. I'm going to be generous, and assume that that isn't the plan for the final website.
#2: Okay, then what does this menu bar do? Perhaps it shows us the sub-items in each section? Well, that would be nice... but it doesn't. Some of those items link to different parts of this page, and some link to other, related pages. But which is which? Only by pointlessly clicking around can you find out. Woo, fun!
#3: But what's this? It's another navigation system. Remember, more is better. Not. This mostly duplicates menu #2, but shows everything in each section, rather than just an arbitrary selection. So why bother with menu #2 at all? Oh yes, because drop-down boxes are horrible.
#4: Woo! Almost missed this one! If, for some bizarre reason, you're having difficulty navigating this site, you can use the site map instead. Assuming it's up-to-date with the rest of the site. Or you can see the external links. Or you can 'contact us', which is pointless since that section's already present in menu #1.
#5: But just in case you haven't found the 'contact us' page, let's put another set of links here; email address and telephone number. Telephone number?! What happens when you click that, then? Oh, nothing. It's not really a link, it just looks like one.
#6: Here, have another list of external links. By this point, visiting some other website instead of this one is looking quite tempting.
But anyway, to fully cover what you are looking for, you will need to search through three different menu systems. But you'll get there in the end. I'll just scroll down...
Oh no! Two more sets of links.
#7: And this is the one that broke my brain. You'd think that three menus would be enough to index every part of the site. But no. Each page is broken up for your convenience into up to half-a-dozen smaller pages. And you have to click 'go to next page' to cycle through them.
I didn't spot this until I was counting the number of menus on the page, for the purposes of this LJ entry. So what are the chances that the average site user will spot them?
Ah, and of course the classic "go to top of page" link. Does anybody ever really click that? There is a scroll bar on the right of your screen. It's very easy to use. Especially if, as in this design, each page is only two or three screenfuls high.
#8: Yep, taking our menu count to eight is this one down the bottom. "Back" — completely pointless since there is a back button handily built into our browser. "Top" — doubly pointless, because it's already in menu #7. "Next" — I assume this is a complement to the back button; it takes you to the next page you are planning to visit. That'll be this one, then. No, it's just a duplicate of "go to next page", I'm assuming. So this menu is utterly pointless.
"But surely this is just a quickly produced prototype?" you might protest. No, this site has been under construction for two or three months. Each menu has been hard-coded onto each of the several dozen web pages, which strongly suggests to be that the designer settled on this design at the beginning of the project and liked it enough to stick with it for months.
One last consideration: as well as being a nightmare for the users, this site would be a b-gger of a headache for the maintainers. Consider this: say I want to add an extra page into the middle of a section. What do I have to do?
First, find the "next" and "previous" pages. Point them towards this page, and this page towards them. Now, edit every page in this section, shuffling around menus #2 and #3 to include the new page on them. That includes every page which has been broken up into half a dozen sub-pages; each one will need to be edited in exactly the same way. Better use copy-and-paste, then. Now we're finally done. Leave it for a couple of months, then remember that you never updated the site map. Because nobody remembers the site map, do they?
In conclusion: this web site bad. Learn from it. Do not make the same mistakes.
Before I started working for the company, they had an on-and-off-again volunteer working on building a new website. Fair enough, the content has been updated, and the new design looks more contemporary and works under other browsers. But in useability terms, it has to be the worst thing I've ever seen.
Now, bear in mind that the first question a person asks when coming to a website is either "how can I find what I want?" or "what is there to see here?" In either case, they look around for the main method of navigating the site; whether that's a system of menus, a sequence of descriptive links, or just a big f---off text box.
Now look at that design above. I've numbered in red each of the menus on this page, and it's quite ridiculous.
#1: Is this the main menu bar? Or is it that one across the top? No, it's this one. I think. Well, there's a start. This shows us the main sections of the site, at least... or does it? Different parts of the site show a slightly different choice of sections. I'm going to be generous, and assume that that isn't the plan for the final website.
#2: Okay, then what does this menu bar do? Perhaps it shows us the sub-items in each section? Well, that would be nice... but it doesn't. Some of those items link to different parts of this page, and some link to other, related pages. But which is which? Only by pointlessly clicking around can you find out. Woo, fun!
#3: But what's this? It's another navigation system. Remember, more is better. Not. This mostly duplicates menu #2, but shows everything in each section, rather than just an arbitrary selection. So why bother with menu #2 at all? Oh yes, because drop-down boxes are horrible.
#4: Woo! Almost missed this one! If, for some bizarre reason, you're having difficulty navigating this site, you can use the site map instead. Assuming it's up-to-date with the rest of the site. Or you can see the external links. Or you can 'contact us', which is pointless since that section's already present in menu #1.
#5: But just in case you haven't found the 'contact us' page, let's put another set of links here; email address and telephone number. Telephone number?! What happens when you click that, then? Oh, nothing. It's not really a link, it just looks like one.
#6: Here, have another list of external links. By this point, visiting some other website instead of this one is looking quite tempting.
But anyway, to fully cover what you are looking for, you will need to search through three different menu systems. But you'll get there in the end. I'll just scroll down...
Oh no! Two more sets of links.
#7: And this is the one that broke my brain. You'd think that three menus would be enough to index every part of the site. But no. Each page is broken up for your convenience into up to half-a-dozen smaller pages. And you have to click 'go to next page' to cycle through them.
I didn't spot this until I was counting the number of menus on the page, for the purposes of this LJ entry. So what are the chances that the average site user will spot them?
Ah, and of course the classic "go to top of page" link. Does anybody ever really click that? There is a scroll bar on the right of your screen. It's very easy to use. Especially if, as in this design, each page is only two or three screenfuls high.
#8: Yep, taking our menu count to eight is this one down the bottom. "Back" — completely pointless since there is a back button handily built into our browser. "Top" — doubly pointless, because it's already in menu #7. "Next" — I assume this is a complement to the back button; it takes you to the next page you are planning to visit. That'll be this one, then. No, it's just a duplicate of "go to next page", I'm assuming. So this menu is utterly pointless.
"But surely this is just a quickly produced prototype?" you might protest. No, this site has been under construction for two or three months. Each menu has been hard-coded onto each of the several dozen web pages, which strongly suggests to be that the designer settled on this design at the beginning of the project and liked it enough to stick with it for months.
One last consideration: as well as being a nightmare for the users, this site would be a b-gger of a headache for the maintainers. Consider this: say I want to add an extra page into the middle of a section. What do I have to do?
First, find the "next" and "previous" pages. Point them towards this page, and this page towards them. Now, edit every page in this section, shuffling around menus #2 and #3 to include the new page on them. That includes every page which has been broken up into half a dozen sub-pages; each one will need to be edited in exactly the same way. Better use copy-and-paste, then. Now we're finally done. Leave it for a couple of months, then remember that you never updated the site map. Because nobody remembers the site map, do they?
In conclusion: this web site bad. Learn from it. Do not make the same mistakes.