usability
AudioGo: site review
I’ve decided to investigate downloading some audio editions of my favourite books. I don’t get time to read, so I reason this is the best way of absorbing more of my favourite titles during my commute.
AudioGo are ‘the home of BBC audiobooks‘, so this seems like a good place to start. How did I get on? Find out!
First impressions
The AudioGo site is, on the face of it, a pretty good-looking site. The quality of imagery is generally high, and the colours generally compliment each other well (albeit accidentally).
Clicking into any of the banners on the homepage takes you to the catalogue of that particular author, but they’re not targetted or specifically-designed landing pages – they’re simply search result pages. They also don’t seem to tag their banners with analytics code, so I’m guessing they can’t tell which banners were the most popular…but that’s a guess.
Oddly, the ‘Mark Watson’s “Live address to the nation” link on the right of the homepage seems to error: http://www.audiogo.com/uk/mark-watsons-live-address-to-the-nation-episode-1/
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On the analytics point, they seem to have implemented the Google Analytics code at the top of the page code instead of the bottom. Not sure if that’s intentional, but generally Google Analytics best practice is to stick it before the closing </body> tag.
Sticking with the code for a moment, there also seems to be some strange source code left in the site:
var Translator = new Translate({"Please enter a valid phone number. For example (123) 456-7890 or 123-456-7890.":"Please enter a valid phone number. For example 01234 567890, (123) 456-7890 or 123-456-7890.","Please enter a valid email address. For example johndoe@domain.com.":"Please enter a valid email address. For example johndoe@example.com.","Please enter a valid zip code. For example 90602 or 90602-1234.":"Please enter a valid postcode or zip. For example AB1 1AB, 90602 or 90602-1234.","Please enter a valid zip code.":"Please enter a valid postcode or zip.","Please enter a valid $ amount. For example $100.00.":"Please enter a valid \u00a3 amount. For example \u00a3100.00.","Please select State\/Province.":"Please select County\/State.","Please use only letters (a-z or A-Z), numbers (0-9) or underscore(_) in this field, first character should be a letter.":"Please use only letters (a-z or A-Z), numbers (0-9) or underscores (_) in this field, first character must be a letter.","Your session has been expired, you will be relogged in now.":"Your session has expired, you will be re-logged in now."});
Mobile
There’s a rudimentary mobile site, too:
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This is a good start, but it’s not a responsive design (i.e as the browser shrinks, the web page ‘degrades’ gracefully into a mobile-compatible version). I think this is a real missed-trick here, as this could be alienating a large number of users. More & more people are visiting using mobile – and given that AudioGo seem relatively active on Twitter, it makes sense to have a properly optimised mobile site.
I’m not quite sure what value the Paypal banner ads, either. It opens a new window that simply preaches the virtues of Paypal…
Also, the very first link on the page returns a blank result:
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Given this is the very first link – and indeed the bestsellers – surely this should work?
Deeper pages
The product pages seem to have lots of dead space, and a strange product detail right-hand-side panel. It seems somewhat … empty and slightly pointless? Why not move the ‘Product info’ box up above the page fold?
Looking quickly at the search page – in particular the advanced search – it seems to be an inordinately long and daunting task:
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This would easily put many people off: there’s loads of unnecessary search options in there, and they’re book-ended by a load of pre-defined results. Strange.
Navigation
The in-page navigation is generally good, but most annoyingly, on a Mac Air (or any other laptop with small screen), the mega drop-down disappears off the page, leaving you unable to see the rest of the content:
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Other oddities
- Bizarre top 10 (some don’t have any ratings, and there’re filter controls at the bottom of the page which are sort of pointless):
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- Email newsletter page refers to ‘Customer My Account Mage Monkey’ in the breadcrumb:
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- For some reason, the site drops in and out of SSL: you may as well force HTTPS across the whole site rather than popping it in & out.
- Weird SEO sitemap: http://www.audiogo.com/uk/catalog/seo_sitemap/product – given it’s paginated, I’d debate the value of this page.
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AXA Sun Life – usability issues
Recently, I had cause to help someone manage their life insurance account online. This isn’t hugely exciting in itself, and actually points to my somewhat misguided tendency to try and ‘help’ people with the Internet…but what it did uncover was a frankly terrible online journey for AXA.
Given their wide-ranging portfolio of insurance products, and indeed the propensity for customer churn in that market sector with the rise & rise of price comparison sites etc…well, you’d expect their online presence to be pretty good in order to give customers one less reason to defect to another brand.
Are they redefining standards? No.
AXA, you failed. And I reckon you failed because you’ve become complacent with your website (or haven’t ever done any usability studies on it). Read on and find out why!
The scenario
Existing life insurance customer wants to login to change some details.
The journey
Armed with a paper copy of the account details, I’m already a bit mystified as to where to go. Nowhere on any of the documentation does it mention a web address to visit. However, plastered all over the docs are the AXA logo – proud and blue with a lovely red stripe on it (not the Jamaican beer, unfortunately), so I bash that into Google and the .co.uk site appears top. Off we go…
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That massive white letterbox there is the crap Flash banner that’s been adblocked by Chrome. Tip #1: if you’re going to use shitty banners, make sure they are hosted on your site so that adblockers don’t block ‘em.
So, on this homepage I’m looking for a way to login. Here’re the problems:
- There is no obvious login area: there’s nothing in the top right (the usual place for login functionality), and nothing in the footer
- There’s no clear hierarchy: loads of similar-looking links, and nothing stand-out to draw the eye
- Ooh look – an ‘Existing customers’ box on the right: except…I’m looking for a login for a Life Insurance policy, but there’s nothing like that in the drop-downs
- Ah, ok – there’s a drop-down in the Insurance top-nav for ‘Manage my policy’ – this could be it!
So, according to this it’s only Travel & Home. Dammit. Ok ok, so there’s another link in the top-nav to ‘Life & Protection’…let’s try there. I’m then treated to this message:
On 15 September 2010, Resolution Limited acquired the majority of AXA’s UK life assurance businesses. Both AXA and Resolution would like to reassure customers that your policy terms and conditions are in no way affected by this acquisition
We’re then given a link to the Sun Life Direct website. Is this where I’m meant to go? I don’t have a Sun Life policy. ARGH!
Conclusion
AXA, if the user can’t login to manage their life policy, you need to tell them. If they can, make it obvious. This infuriated me and the person I was trying to help (not least because I’m supposed to know what I’m doing On The Internet – and now you’ve made me look silly).
Oh yeah, and your footer still says ©2010. That’s soo last year.
1Online production: the process
I know most blog posts tend to begin with “It’s been a while since I updated this thing”…but nearly 2 months abstinence is a record for me.
The reason I’ve been absent is because my day job has changed: I’m no longer directly involved in SEO, usability or digital marketing (note the word directly). I am an Online Producer for one of the big 4 UK mobile telcos, meaning my role is to schedule in & plan resource for digital requests/requirements. So, things you see on the website are there because of our department.
This is sideways step for me, since I’ve always been interested in the usability & SEO angle of digital content…and now, that’s all left to other people. We execute other people’s requests.
It’s all good though: my interest in wireframing, design and so on mean that I can add value as a producer – for example, creating functional mockups before briefs are given to the content editors to bash into the CMS, revealing any requirements gaps before we get too far down the line.
As such, I’d like to do an introductory post to the basics of online production.
The tools
I’ve had a play with a bunch of tools for mockups and prototyping, and have settled on this lot as my digital armoury (bearing in mind I’m currently PC based, meaning Omnigraffle is out scope for me!):
- Mockingbird (https://gomockingbird.com), an excellent web-based wireframing tool that makes simple drag & drop screens very easy. It’s pretty good value for money too (about £4.50 pcm)
- Just In Mind (http://www.justinmind.com/), an installed application that can take the mockup stage one level further and add more detail & and interactions where required
- Adobe Fireworks (http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/), which is even billed these days as a prototyper by Adobe. I find its quick and easy vector graphic creation a great way of quickly grabbing and editing screenshots. Perfect if you don’t need to mock up interactions – just the look & feel
We use Sohnar Traffic to schedule in resource to execute the brief. This isn’t a tool of choice as such, but having not used any others this seems ok so far.
The process
So: how do we get stuff done on the web in a large, blue-chip organisation? At a high level, like this:
The brief
Quality starts at the top, and without a good brief, we’re nothing. We’re meant to receive a brief from the business that’s well-written and prescriptive. Note that we’re meant to get one like this: in reality, this doesn’t always happen. In our organisation, though, we’ve the benefit of having User Experience Leads that help manage the relationship with the business, and can help educate them to article their web needs. With the UE’s help, we get better quality input arriving first time. A full summary, annotated screenshots, and accurate deadlines are all useful.
Rationalisation, fact-finding & scoping
Depending on the quality of the brief, the Producer will usually then spend some time rationalising the brief. This is waffle-speak for using our experience to ensure that nothing obvious has been missed out or is unaccounted for. The Producer then scopes the job in terms of time, resources and checkpoints – and ensures things like the requested deadline are all achievable. If they’re not (or if they can be achieved but at the detriment of another project), this is communicated back to the requestor/UE for prioritisation & business decision.
Resource allocation
Once the bun-fight has concluded and there’s a final agreement to go ahead, we then start to allocate the resources to do the job. This is usually done in collusion with a Traffic Manager.
Execution
Not a killing, but getting the first lot of stuff done. Copywriters, designers and other resources all get cracking. I will go into more detail about who does what, and in what order, later…
Comments/amends/signoff
Once the first round of content has been created, it’s over to the requestor and/or UE for comments & amends. Typically (ideally!) we don’t want to do more than 3 iterations.
Quality
Before being put live to the public, the work is subject to quality checks. These are there to ensure all the content has been signed off, is accessible, imagery is used correctly under copyright, and so on. The final checks are done by the UE Lead for the department that requested the change.
Live!
…aaaand there it goes. Live to the world. Hold on tight!
That’s it in a nutshell. Hope you found it interesting. 
Site review – bestbuy.co.uk
I spotted a retweet today from a friend that announced Best Buy had iPads in stock. This in iteself isn’t of particular interest to me, but I thought the site could do with the once-over…so I duly headed over there for a look.
How did the site shape up? Are they ‘Best Buy’, or ‘Best Bye-bye’? (AHA DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE? It’s like I’m Anne Robinson or something). This is actually quite a short review, but take a look anyway. Read it over your coffee or something. 
Read on!
4Site review: easyjet.com
Firstly, apologies for the silence: Real Life seems to be happening, and Twitter has taken a backseat – as have reviews. Anyway: I’m back!
I was recently looking at flights to Greece, and as part of my research phase I visited the ubiquitously-orange EasyJet site…and I bet you can guess what’s coming up next! Yup – Review Time! God, my life’s incredible.
How did it fare? Do the bargain-basement brand values carry through to their site? Read on and find out!
Disclaimer: I’ve used false dates for the purposes of this review – so don’t bother coming to my house to steal my pants on the dates shown in the screenshots. I will be in, and will summarily execute underwear thieves. Unless you come bearing fig rolls, in which case you’ll be robbed of them first – and then executed. Understood? Good.
Another disclaimer: If you don’t like the colour orange, don’t read this article.
1New Firefox 3.6 themes: completely pointless?
I am a long-time user of Firefox, and generally think it to be a good browser. I’ve toyed with Google Chrome, but generally find myself coming back to Firefox.
As such, I recently updated my version of Firefox to 3.6. Having successfully upgraded, I am taken to this page:
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(http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6/whatsnew/)
How pretty! It proudly tells me:
Thanks for supporting Mozilla’s mission of encouraging openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web!
It’s here that I start to have issues (other than the ones you are abundantly aware of).
Issue 1:
How exactly have I “supported Mozilla’s mission of encouraging openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web!”? Because I’ve updated my browser? Feels like Mozilla are disappearing up their own sockets.
Issue 1a:
In addition to the above, if you click the link for ‘Mozilla’s mission’, you’re taken to a page that explains who they are and what they do. Point #2 on that page says:
We’re a public benefit organization
dedicated not to making money but to improving the way people everywhere experience the Internet.
Um: so what about all that kick-back revenue Mozilla get from Google by having them as the default search engine for Firefox? 
Issue 3:
From a web usability angle, this is the bigger one. On this ‘update’ page, the user is informed they can choose from over 35,000 themes for Firefox. At first, you think “That’s awesome!”
And then you mouseover some of these themes to try them out – only to realise that, for anyone other than a basic user with no bookmarks on their toolbar, or any toolbar extensions – the majority are unusable. Check out the screenshot below of how one of these themes looks on my version of Firefox with various extensions:
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How is that any use to anyone?!
Rant over.
4Confusing card payment screens
This is a personal bugbear of mine: badly-designed payment screens. The payment stage is absolutely critical: if a site screws up here, a customer will quite often leave the journey if they:
- Get confused by what’s being asked of them
- The content of the site isn’t accurate/correct
- If the site doesn’t inspire confidence in the purchase process
With that in mind, DomainMonster should revise their card payment section:
It all starts off well: select the card type, and fill in the details…only it gets confusing because I’ve selected Visa Debit, yet each of the questions still have a * next to them, indicating they’re mandatory…except the ones with (Maestro only) are purporting to only need completing if the user has a Maestro card.
So which is it? Do I fill them in anyway? What if my card doens’t have those details on it? What if it does, but I’m being told I don’t need to complete the fields? What’ll happen if I don’t fill them in?
The problem is that these are such trivial issues, but often they’re enough to make users bail out of a journey.
The solution? Dynamically alter the question set depending on the type of card they choose from the drop-down. It’s not hard to do, and could drastically improve the usability of this section.
3Site review: Virgin Holidays ‘Weddings’ section
Hello! I’ve not written a scathing review of a website for a while, so I thought I’d drop this little gem on you.
For one reason and another, I was recently forced inclined to look for more information regarding weddings abroad – specifically in the Caribbean. Drop ‘caribbean wedding‘ into Google, and the Virgin Holidays (www.virginholidays.co.uk) brand appeared top of the results. Having worked for Mr Branson in the past (and generally thinking his products are pretty good), I went and had a look.
How did I get on? Was the site virginal, or did it more resemble a loose woman of the night? Read on…
2Review of National Rail (www.nationalrail.co.uk)
Travelling a fair distance (120+ miles) each day getting to and from work means the train is really the only method of transport that works for me. As such, I am a regular visitor to the National Rail site (www.nationalrail.co.uk), and have been for a number of years.
Predictably (why else would I be mentioning it?), they’ve recently relaunched it – so I thought I’d share my views of it with you. Does it do the job it sets out to do? Have they taken a step back? Read on!
(Ok so I accept I’m late to the party with this one because eConsultancy have already written an excellent review of the new site – but I’m going to try hard to differentiate, just so you don’t get bored…)
2Review of Associated Press (www.ap.org) site
Whilst looking for some news story providers, I decided to check out the AP (Associated Press) site, www.ap.org. I was after some quick info about news story feeds/aggregation, and possibly some stock imagery.
What happened on my thrilling journey? What was their site like? I know you can’t wait to find out, really. It’s the only thing that’s keeping you going, isn’t it? Admit it. It’s fine.
Read my (admittedly brief) review here!
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