Web designing and User Experience Design

Every day we browse through hundreds and thousands of websites but not all of them have the ability to make the user stay with the site and visit the site again and again. Did any of you stop to think about the reasons for this? Why only some specific sites stay in our minds and why we always prefer to use those sites among all the available sites. If you look at this matter in the customers’ perspective, you will realize that the main reason for the popularity of these sites is its interactive and user friendly design.

Even though consumers use the web sites mainly to collect information, information alone will not attract a customer. A site’s content, its information architecture, design and speed also matters a lot. Even though your site has all the information a customer needs, if its design is not user friendly and it gives a bad experience for the user, consumers won’t use it twice.

And also there is a huge misconception that the Design is all about the user which is not at all true. While meeting the customer requirements at the same time a great design helps the organization achieve its objectives as well.

Elements of User Experience Design

•  Visual design 
•  Information architecture 
•  Information
•  Structuring, organization, and labeling
•  Finding and managing

In Digital Marketing, user experience design is offered to the customer along with software developments and other applications developments. After researching about customer requirements, designers can create a site which meets those requirements. When designing the site, the designer has to make sure that the design is not too technical because everyone does not have the technical competence to use such a site and it will draw them away from your site and also improve the usability of the system. Therefore it is really important to have a great web design and a web experience because it can boost the visits to your website.

Today I’m going to talk about the web usability of elakiri.com, which has been named as the most popular entertainment website in Sri Lanka.

Source . http://www.alexa.com/topsites

Accessibility

1.  Site load‐time is reasonable – Is it is shown in the below picture; elakiri.com site is full of ads, videos and lots of other animations. Even though it increases the attractiveness of the site, it surely slows down the load time.

2.  Adequate text‐to‐background contrast – Top quarter of the site is full of pictures and animations and the remaining portion is filled with texts which are hard to read. But the space near those pictures and animations is empty.

3.  Font size/spacing is easy to read – Texts are too small and too much unused space at the top.

4.  Flash & add‐ons are used sparingly – Yes, Flash player is only required to watch music videos.

5.  Images have appropriate ALT tags – Images do not have ALT tags.

6.  Site has custom not‐found/404 page – Site does not have a 404 page.

Identity

7.  Company logo is prominently placed – Yes, the site name is in the top left hand corner of the site.

8.  Tagline makes company’s purpose clear – It’s not that clear because it only says “The largest Sri Lankan online community” which does not talk about its main purpose which is providing old and new songs in various formats.

9.  Home‐page is digestible in 5 seconds – Home page is filled with all the pictures, links, comments, related links so it takes some time to find the required fields.

10. Clear path to company information – No, there is no clear path to information.

11. Clear path to contact information - There is a “contact us” button in the home page but it only provides their email address.

Navigation

12. Main navigation is easily identifiable –Yes. A properly defined navigation tab is provided in at the top of the page.

13. Navigation labels are clear & concise -Yes

14. Number of buttons/links is reasonable – Yes. To every related area, there is a link in the home page.

15. Company logo is linked to home‐page - Yes

16. Links are consistent & easy to identify – They are easy to identify but the consistency is less.

17. Site search is easy to access - Yes

Content

18. Major headings are clear & descriptive    - Yes

19. Critical content is above the “fold” - Critical content is shown at the top of the page.

20. Styles & colors are consistent – Theme colours are blue and white and those colours are being used consistently.      

21. Emphasis (bold, etc.) is used sparingly - Headings are in bold letters.

22. Ads & pop‐ups are unobtrusive - Yes

23. Main copy is concise & explanatory - Yes

24. URLs are meaningful & user‐friendly - Yes. The URL is www.elakiri.com/

25. HTML page titles are explanatory     - Yes

If the answer for all the above 25 questions were Yes, it can be said that this site provides the best web usability and user experience designs to its users.