Posted on Fri, Nov 06, 2009
Last week we spent a couple of days conducting website usability labs in Norman. We’ve done labs before, but never before was it so apparent that everyone uses websites differently. We determined that there are three distinct ways in which people look for information on websites.
- Navigators – These folk look at menu options and hyperlinks first and read content second.
- Readers – These guys look at everything. They read a web page like a book and tend to be process-oriented people. Pictures and graphics do not catch their attentions.
- Searchers – Menus, hyperlinks and text mean nothing to searchers. They prefer search boxes to find their information.
The people in the labs last week were equally split between navigators and searchers; the readers were few and far between. This comes to no surprise to us…who has time to read big blocks of text these days?
Of course, we as research nerds found this intriguing. We always build our usability reports to appeal to different types of people, because we know our clients will use pieces of our reports differently. Each of us at Evolve navigate through information differently, so we each took a look at our reporting layout to make sure we’re appealing to as many people as possible.
When designing your website, pay attention to how you can make it easier for everyone to find information. Remember to clearly label menus and hyperlinks and provide a search option if your website contains a lot of pages and information that make it hard to navigate.