We thought we would look back over the last couple of years to review the most common design flaws we’ve encountered across a range of industry websites. The good news is that many of the design principles that organisations regularly fail to address can easily be fixed with minimal cost and effort.
This review was possible through the evaluation of every website which UsabilityOne has performed Usability Audits. Each of the audited websites was independently assessed against over 150 known and tested usability principles.
The audit covers twelve core areas including navigation, content and content writing, design and graphics, search, error prevention and recovery, registration, trust, internationalism, window titles, news and press releases, branding and company information, and advertising.
The following are the website design flaws we most frequently see:
Failure to assign alternative (ALT) text appropriately: A surprising 67% of sites failed to do this resulting in inaccessible sites for those users relying on assistive technology. Correctly assigned alternative text also positively impacts on search engine optimisation; search engines access text more easily than images.
Links not matching the titles of the page to which they refer to: Over half (57%) the sites reviewed failed to meet this basic principle. Matching the page title to the link users’ click helps them to stay aware of their current location.
Failure to use different colour hypertext for clicked and unclicked links: As this is such an established usability norm; is was surprising and disappointing to see 63% of sites fail to meet this principle.
Not making bullets located next to a link clickable: This is one usability flaw we see too frequently; it was not a surprise to us that 73% of websites failed on this criterion. Until you conduct user testing you’ll never know just how many of your user will attempt to click the bullet instead of the link. Poor presentation of search results was the main concern for the majority of websites with search functions.
Prioritising search results: Three quarters (74%) of sites failed to accurately prioritise results so that the most relevant hits appeared first.
Not highlighting the location of the search text: More than two thirds (70%) of sites failed to highlight the location of the searched text within the search results; leaving users to ponder whether the search had returned accurate results.
Poor error messages: We found that 50% of sites contained error messages that did not attempt to assist the user by indicating the problem, with a further 70% not providing constructive advice on how to fix the error.
The company logo on the home page should be unclickable: Another problem we see far too often is having the company logo on the homepage a link (58% failed to meet this principle). The company logo should be rendered unclickable on the homepage as it simply directs back to the current location if it is clicked. It should be clickable on every other page except the home page.
Placement of error messages in forms: A surprising result of 74% of sites failed to prominently highlight the entry field which held the error. The aim of error messages is to quickly inform the user of the error and how to rectify it. The clearest method of presenting error messages is to indicate at the beginning of the form a list of the fields requiring correction; and additionally highlighting the appropriate fields.
