Sub-headers help users decide whether to stay

Your web pages will not be read word for word. In many cases your user is looking for a single piece of information. He’s actually still navigating. If he sees a page of text without sub-headers he may do one of three things:

• If he’s on the right page he might:
  • spend longer than necessary trying to find the information he needs
  • lose the scent, decide he’s on the wrong page and leave.
• If he’s on the wrong page he might take a long time working this out.

Sub-headers will help him make quick decisions in all three of these cases.

A good sub-header describes the text below it

A page with well-named sub-headers will help users find the paragraph they need. This is because they summarise the text below them. So a user scanning the page will quickly read the sub-headers and stop at the one they need. Either this or they quickly realise the page does not have what they need.

Sub-headers help screen readers

Screen readers like JAWS allow their user the ability to navigate through a page via the identified headers in the HTML. In these instances your sub-headers literally are navigation. People using such software will have a better experience if you spend some time thinking about your sub-headers.

It’s also a good reason for using the proper HTML code for your headers.

Try writing your sub-headers first

A good way to focus your writing is to jot down the key questions your user has when reading the page. You can then use these questions as sub-headers and then write your copy underneath each. If you begin to stray off the topic of the sub-header then it might be unnecessary text. Consider removing it or writing another sub-heading.

Improve further with bold text

You can make your paragraph even easier to understand by using bold text on the important words within the paragraph. This way your user can find the answer to their question even more easily.

Introducing trigger words

I’ve used the term ‘trigger images’ because they work in a very similar way to Jared Spool’s trigger words. He suggests using the exact words your users are thinking about so that they pull a trigger in users’ heads.

Trigger images

TV catch-up sites like BBC iPlayer and ITV Catch-up (a much better name than iPlayer by the way) can often have many programmes listed on any one page. Most people scan through the page looking for something they want to watch. They will not read every programme title. So the images help them quickly find something.

When done well, the images pull a trigger of recognition in the users mind. This can be recognition of someone or something they like or it could help them when looking for a specific programme. It only really works when the images mean something to the user instantly.

BBC iPlayer

Catch-up websites often get this wrong. I know that creating these images is quite an overhead but a little extra thought could improve usability. Here is a example from BBC iPlayer that shows both good and bad practice.

The image for Heroes is obvious but Silent Witness is not.

The central characters from ‘Heroes’ make it easy to find for those who watch it. However the ‘Silent Witness’ image is less obvious. One of the central characters is featured but she is turning away from the camera and both the characters heads are small.

People who want to watch ‘Silent Witness’ are still going to be able to find it. But they will be able to do so easier if a better image is used. People who are just browsing may overlook ‘Silent Witness’.

ITV Catch-up

ITV Catch-up has both good and bad examples as well

The example above shows that ITV are guilty of the same thing. Let’s take the X-Factor image for instance. They’ve used the central characters, the judges, but they are difficult to recognise. Their heads are very small and the image is quite heavily compressed, so it’s pixelated. Corrie and Emmerdale are a bit better though.

Guidelines

A simple set of guidelines could help the issue:

• If the images are pixelated, then reduce the compression so that they aren’t.
• Use something recognisable like a main character or celebrity guest. It isn’t important for the user to understand the scene, just the subject or characters.
• Make the face or object clear by cropping the image before shrinking it. The important bit will then be large enough to recognise.

The subject of the image should then be easily recognisable. If it still isn’t, then consider using a different image. I’ve had a go at the X Factor image as an example. Much better isn’t it?

Some cropping improves the image

If you don’t watch ‘The X Factor’ then this image might mean nothing to you. But those who do, will find this image easier to recognise than 4 tiny heads.

Free browse

The free browse task is when the facilitator just asks the participant to just spend a few minutes looking around the site. People often make it the first task in the test. But it’s a waste of valuable lab time.

It’s totally artificial. In a usability test you’re trying to simulate reality. You want to see how people are actually using your site out there in the real world. Nobody is going to just browse around your site without purpose. It’s tempting just to get their impressions of the site but it’s of no real value. If you start off with a free browse task you’re basically giving the user the opportunity to teach themselves how to use your site.

It’s a waste of your first task. There is naturally going to be some learning that takes place during a usability test. So your first task is the most real. It is the one that the participant attempts fresh. This is the moment when you get to see how people use your site when they’ve never used it before. If you use this opportunity to let participants have a quick browse around then you’re throwing away the most useful part of the session.

Homepage review

The homepage review task is when the facilitator walks the participant through each part of the homepage and ask for their impressions.

It too is artificial. Like the free browse task, the homepage review does not simulate reality. You can get a bit of useful information from it, but at the cost of making the rest of your tasks unreal.

You help the participant decide where to click. When people attempt to find information on a website they don’t look at every link on the homepage. They often follow the first appropriate looking link.

If you’ve previously walked them through every aspect of the site’s homepage you are giving them an insight that they will not get in reality. Instead of following the first link that looks appropriate, they can use the knowledge from the homepage review to decide which of all the options is the best. They are then performing a scenario that bares little resemblance to the experience real users will have.

Eyetracking the homepage

Eyetracking is a bit of a touchy subject in usability at present. It is only really helpful in very specific studies but usability companies are finding that it wins business. But that’s the topic for about a dozen other posts.

The results of just eyetracking participants looking at the homepage are totally useless without giving them a task to do. I’ll explain this with an example.

If I were to ask you to look at a door without any other instruction you would probably stare blankly at it. If you knew I was eyetracking, you might feel obliged to look around different bits of the door.

However if I were to ask you to open the door then you would most likely look at the door handle. If I were to ask you to remove the door, you’d probably look at the hinges. You see the areas you look at will depend on the task you are trying to complete.

It’s a totally useless exercise to just show a participant a page and then track their eyes while they do it. Nobody will ever visit your site to just stare blankly at the page. You might end up with a pretty picture to pass around the office. But that’s all it is, a pretty picture.

The results of eyetracking a page will differ widely depending on the task that the participants are asked to complete.

Try to simulate reality

Usability testing is about trying to simulate what’s happening in the real world and benefit from the observations. The tasks above are vanity tasks that remove an element of reality from the session. You will get more realistic results if you avoid using them.

If usability testing is Champagne then an expert usability review is Cava. It is cheaper and the results can often be similar. This is when a usability expert reviews the site or areas of it for usability problems.

They are often described as heuristic evaluations. However I think this is just to make them sound posh. An heuristic evaluation relies on heuristic principles rather than the experience of the reviewer.

It’s quicker

A usability specialist can often deliver your expert review in the same week that you ask for it. If time is precious then an expert review can deliver results within your tight timescales.

It’s cheaper

You don’t need to recruit participants and you use less consultancy time, so it can work out to be a lot cheaper.

You can use it to get more out of your usability tests

If you’ve never done any usability testing on your site, there can be a lot of issues that will be obvious to a usability expert. So an expert review can help you fix these issues before you do some testing. You’ll then avoid having the study being dominated by issues that you didn’t need a usability test to find.

The limitations of expert reviews

The results are based on opinion. It will hopefully (but not always) be an expert opinion, but it is an opinion nonetheless. Usability testing results are (hopefully) based on observed facts. You know the issues exist because you saw people having problems.

You need an expert to carry them out. With a bit of coaching you can do your own usability tests. But expert reviews should be carried out by someone spends a lot of time watching people using websites. You have to trust the fact that the person doing the review actually has this experience.

It’s difficult to prioritise the findings. Even a very experienced usability specialist will struggle to prioritise the findings of their review. The very important findings will be obvious. Everything other than that is difficult to put a severity level on.

Some sites are not appropriate for expert reviews. If the subject of your site is specialised then an expert review may not be a good idea. For example if you’re a plant hire firm, a usability consultant is not best placed to provide you with insights into the motivation behind people looking to hire cherry pickers. Only the really outstanding issues will be found.

Some advice

Find out about your expert. If you are paying a company to review your site, find out about the person who is going to review it. How long have they been with the company? How much usability testing have they done there?

Like many consultancies, some usability companies hire people straight out of university. Many of these people will make excellent consultants but until they’ve spent a lot of time observing users, they are not  experts.

Test with real users as well. After you’ve fixed the issues from your expert review you should make usability testing your next step.