Usability: Web Services
Why is Usability Important?
Usability looks at how easy it is for a user of your site to navigate your website and accomplish the goals that you have set for that site – find a health care provider, apply for admissions to your college, etc. Reviewing your site for usability issues and finding ways to address them is critical for a well-functional and effective web presence. Without it, your site runs the potential of being too difficult to use and people will leave the site.
How Can External Web Services Help Me with Usability?
Peer Site Comparisons for Best Practices
A comprehensive review of the websites of your peer institutions is a good way to garner a reliable analysis of trends and common conventions in your field. In turn, it gives you a good sense of what users are looking for in a website, as websites become more user-focused as they mature. Alternatively, the analysis might also show where you might be able to leverage something users are looking for that your peers and competitors have missed.
Review of Typographic and Graphic Design Best Practices
Choice of font and font size, spacing and color can affect the legibility of your content, and lead to usability issues. The use of photos, buttons and other graphics can cause similar issues. External Web Services can advise and consult on these choices and to make recommendations based on up-to-date best practices from the industry. We also provide graphic design services for your unit – talk to us about your needs!
Readability and Comprehension Level of Content
A key factor in building a well-used site is in providing content that is written within the comfort zone of your audience. This requires well-written text that is easy to understand and process. External Web Services can analyze the content of your site to determine the ease with which your target demographic can digest and retain the content that you present to them.
Iterative Usability Testing of CMS Templates
External Web Services routinely examines the templates its provides to the UF Academic Health Center to see if they best meet the audience’s needs. A key component of this is Usability Testing, in which individuals are asked to use the site while their reactions and use of the site is recorded, analyzed and used to make universal changes to the template to enhance their usability for the entire enterprise.
On-demand Usability Testing of Unit-Specific Websites and Tasks
External Web Services can work with your unit in setting up user-based usability testing. By bringing in people not familiar with your website and asking them to accomplish specific tasks, we can identify where the site works and where the navigation or paths to complete a task might need to be reconsidered to make them more user-friendly and easy to accomplish.
Review and Recommendations to Improve Information Architecture, Navigation, Use of Links and Key Pathway Processes
Keeping a site concise and to the point is an ongoing process that requires periodic review of the material of the site to clean out redundant, trivial and outdated content. These reviews and site analytics can show ways to streamline user paths to get to relevant content and specific user actions. External Web Services can assist units in identifying these areas for improvement and making changes that benefit the end user and the unit’s goals.