TV3 just built a new website. Congratulations, TV3! But, wait, there’s a problem! Let’s see if we can spot it…
What’s wrong with this picture:
- 293K of HTML and CSS, and 131K of images
- has been able to lock up visitors’ PCs
- white text on a black background
- body text is small font size
- non-compliant HTML that breaks all sorts of accessibility guidelines
To top it off, one of my UI guys at Netconcepts regaled me with the story of an impromptu user test of TV3’s new site at a recent Usability Professionals Association meeting in Auckland:
Some guy from a usability consultancy did a demo on how to do user testing. He picked a random person from the audience and sat her down in front of a browser and said: “TV3 has launched a new website; let’s check it out.” The audience member was left to her own devices. so she guessed correctly that the url was tv3.co.nz. Then she got to the site and the guy said “What are you likely to want on this site?” and she responded “I’d like to see trailers of shows.” So the guy told her to find ’em. You’ll never guess what she did next! She hit Control-F and typed “trailers” in the box. She didn’t even think/see to use the search box on the site. (Most people don’t even know about Control-F. You’d think people who do know about it would use the search box on a website.) Well then anyway… he asked her what she’d do if she wanted to get ahold of someone to complain about something she saw on telly. She found the contact link in the top nav, but it’s a dropdown that says ADVERTISING SALES. She was stumped. She didn’t think to actually click the word that said CONTACT. Another thing that happened was the dude asked her to see what’s going to be on Campbell Live tonight. So she clicked the link, and it opened in a new window. Then more stuff happened and then the dude asked her to go back to the home page. Once again she was stumped. Cos the back button was greyed out! target=”_blank” is EVIL!
Wished I would have been there to watch! Sounded quite entertaining. Too bad TV3 didn’t think to test the new site on some of their viewers before launching. Should have used Morae by TechSmith, or something similar…
It’s 2005. Every profeessional web designer should be able to design a usable site now, dontcha think?
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I was at the the event and it was quite interesting and funny to watch. So many design, usability and SEO mistakes on one website…
The test person probably wasn’t very representative. On the other hand it showed me again how important user testing is no matter if it’s a website, remote control or a magazine.
Whenever I need to explain usability, I sit people down in front of www.freeparking.biz and ask them to find the contact page – it’s a shocker.