Usability issues during common website visits

Alpha version

Organization

Sectoral organization for accountancy, 130 FTE

The challenge

What usability issues does their current website have? And what could be possible solutions?

Roles

  • Me: UX researcher
  • Research project collaborators: Project manager, web editor

Constraints

  • No budget
  • Almost no contextual information
  • Project manager was external and new to the organization
  • Project manager had almost no information about the audience
  • I had no direct access to stakeholders, except to one web editor
  • No access to members of the organization (‘end-users’)
  • No access to web analytics data

My approach

From my first casual visits to their website I developed my hypothesis that the website of this organization had various usability issues. The website held a huge amount of information, but I felt the navigation was not adequate in helping me find it.

Phase 1: Exploratory research – Desk research

I did desk research about the organization, to get a better understanding of the organization and its objectives. In addition, I navigated through the website to get an impression of potential UX issues. I also reviewed their annual report to see what initiatives they have regarding digital innovation or engagement of their members, as such topics might provide hints about their current objectives for the website.

Phase 2: Exploratory research – Interviews

I used the information in an interview with a web editor, to check what I learned and to gather new data. Next, I did an intake of the project, by interviewing the external project manager about what his thoughts were about the current website, what information he had collected, and what room there was to do research.

Phase 3: Selecting the research methods

A useful research method would be to perform usability tests with target audiences. However, the organization was not yet ready to invite their members to participate in user research. A low budget option research method without involving end-users would be to identify the website’s technical issues using web analytics data (e.g. 404s, bounce rates, loading times).

Given the constraints, I decided to do an expert review to find website usability issues.

Phase 4: Expert review

To focus the expert review, I asked the project manager about the most important tasks of people visiting their website. The project manager indicated that 70% of visitors visits the section that explains laws and regulations. I decided to center my expert review around this primary user task. On every step towards the legislation pages, I indicated where visitors could experience issues with the UI.

Phase 5: Review report with proposals

After the analysis I created a Powerpoint that contained my findings and recommendations. For two cases I included a visual proposal for improvement, using Photoshop and a wireframing tool. In the report I again highlighted the limitations of expert reviews, and provided some suggestions for doing research with their audience.

Result

  • Project proposal for an expert review. The project proposal included 8 additional suggestions for alternative research objectives, with short explanations of what value that research would bring and how to get insights.
  • Powerpoint presentation with the results of my expert review, with:
    • 24 findings
    • 11 suggestions for improvement, and 2 UI design proposals

Impact

  • Prior to my expert review, the organization’s plans with a new version of the website were primarily technical: Migrate the website to a current technical platform, and give it a fresh new look.
  • After my expert review: The organization decided to make it a big project that required an EU tender. The inclusion of UX research was one of the main pillars of the project.

Note: I would not claim to be the driver of this change of heart, but I would like to believe my discussions and deliverables have contributed to including their audience in improving their website.

Reflection

  • Ideally, expert reviews should be based on the views of multiple expert reviewers, and cover more tasks. For this organization, this was all the research that was possible at the time.
  • Before pitching user research projects at other organizations, I would first try to identify whether they have insights from prior user research, and what current initiatives they have where end-users are actively involved.