Website evaluation is an not easy task – I know, because I’ve been at both sides of the table, both as a web designer presenting my work for a client, and at the client side evaluating a website design from another designer.

While web design evaluation and website evaluation can be two very different things, I’ve made a short list over things to look for which should come handy whether you’re designing websites yourself, or if you want to learn what to look for when paying for one:

1. Does the web design match the site message? Check to see if the website look and feel matches your expectations for this kind of website, if the message is getting through, and if the site represents the brand in a positive, consistent manner
2. Is it easy to understand what you can do? Make sure the website clearly conveys the primary functions in a way which is easy to understand for the user. One quick glance at the page should be enough for a user to tell what he/she can do
3. Is the navigation clear and concise? The navigation should be easy to spot, not taking focus away from the main content or functionality, and make it clear where the user is at all times
4. Are all expected elements and functionality in place? Search input field, mailing list sign up form, proper footer / colophon, contact information and logo
5. Is the website layout clean and in order? By following grid conventions the layout should not be floating about and navigation, menus and content should all be arranged in an orderly fashion giving the layout a clean, uncluttered structure
6. Has dummy text been used? Lights should be flashing if what you’re looking at has dummy text like “lorem ipsum” or similar in the content areas or in the navigation fields. Skilled designers use real content, since the actual website content always affects the design in one way or another
7. Are the main content blocks and key functionality correctly prioritized? Content priority can be the difference between “stay or go” for a user, so make sure to put the most important content or functionality as high up on a page as possible
8. Is it value for money? Make sure the website has the professional touch which makes up for the cost involved, that it feels like a quality product you can be proud of

Evaluating others websites can be a great learning experience, and a good way to find inspiration. Quite a few web design forums have sections where people ask for criticism on their designs, which is great wether you’re looking to improve your own website or learn from what others have found.

You can hire me to do professional web site evaluation. Sometimes a set of fresh eyes can do wonders.

A couple of years back I attended a course arranged by Humanfactors Int. in London called “User-centered analysis and conceptual design”. Besides learning design strategy, user profiles, data gathering and information architecture, a key topic in this course was using active listening to get the right answers.

Our teacher, none other than the infamous John Sorflaten, taught us how actively participating in the listening process ensures that both you and the crowd understands what’s being said. Also, if done right, you can get professional advice for free!

This is what you can achieve from active listening:

• Better communication by ensuring you understand what’s being said
• Building confidence with the person asking and the other listeners by proving you’re making an effort to understand them
• Engaging the audience by giving everyone a chance to share their perspectives
• Getting extra advice for free that you may not would have gotten otherwise

Here’s how it works. Imagine you’re reading a text on a website, where the text is broken down in a bullet point list with the words highlighted. It gets easier to read, you can scan it quickly, and you catch the points faster than having to comprehend a large block of text.

Active listening works pretty similar – when someone’s addressing you with a question – either in a meeting or one on one, look directly at the person speaking and repeat the important keywords out loud as they come. As with all cognitive learning processes, repeating means it gets easier to remember, and not that’s not just for you but for everyone who is listening.

When the person speaking to you is done with his question, rephrase the question the way you understood it, and add “.. was that what you meant?”. Doing this gives the other person a chance to confirm your understanding of the issue, or rephrase his question to get his points across. Repeat this process until the person confirms you got it right.

Once you’ve given an answer, ask the person wether he’s satisficed with your reply or not – “Did that answer your question?”. Now, address the rest of the people in the room – “Do any of you have something to add?”. Engage the other listeners, they may offer perspectives you’re not able to.

Last step is to turn back to the person who asked you the original question – “Is there anything else you’d like to add?”. By giving the person who asked you a question time and space to offer his view on the subject, you’re getting professional advice for no extra effort.

By now you’ve proven that you’re able to understand what’s being said, you’ve engaged the audience, you’ve given everyone a chance to participate and – hopefully – you’ve answered a question.

So – put short – here’s how it works. When someone is asking you a question,

1. Repeat the important keywords out loud during the whole length of the question
2. Rephrase the question and then ask the person if that’s what he meanth – “.. was that what you meant?”
3. Repeat until you get it right. If you get it right on the first try you’re doing great, if not then keep on repeating until you’ve rephrased the question correctly
4. Answer the question, and involve the audience to let other peoples perspectives come through
5. Ask the person who asked you – “Is there anything else you’d like to add?”

If it seems awkward, just keep on pushing. Keep practicing, and never let a chance to apply the active listening technique slip away from you. As with everything else, excersice is the only way to perfection. With time you can start refining your skills, giving you more out of a conversation.

Our webshop is doing ok. However, to reach our sales goals this year we have to drastically improve our conversion rate by making more customers out of the users in our webshop. What we’re looking for is at least a 0.5% increase, and while that may not sound like much, we have some steep cliffs to climb before the numbers start nudging in the right direction.

We’re a telecom company, and most of our revenues comes from subscriptions. Selling mobile phones in our webshop is, put quite simply, just another way of selling more subscriptions.

The mobile phones we sell are locked to our subscriptions for 18 months, which is sort of an industry standard in this country. In return for cheap a mobile phone, we’re guaranteed income from our customer for a year and a half when a sale is closed.

What we see from our statistics is that a large portion of our users turn around and walk the other way after entering our webshop, and while that may not be very uncommon, we’re trying to find the reasons behind that.

The other day I sat down with the man in charge for our webshop sales to see if we could come up with some great ideas. A reasonable place to start would be asking the users what they were looking for, so we figured we’d arrange a survey for our users, and perhaps combine that with interviews or a full scale user test.

In order to know what kind of questions to ask, we wrote down a set of theories that could explain why a user would not convert into a paying customer:

• Unable to find the product he is looking for. This could be either missing metacategories (camera phones, phones ranging from $200-$500), or if its too hard to navigate or if the product just isn’t listed
• The price is wrong. When price matters, and it often does, customers won’t buy if it feels too high, or if the customer knows he can get it cheaper somewhere else
• Just window shopping. One of the great features of the web is that its so fast and easy to compare prices and view avaliable products. A lot are doing research preparing for a purchase later on
• Unable to make up his mind. Many people need to feel the product in their hands or try it to see if it matches their expectations and needs
• The customer has returned from an earlier purchase, and is in need of support or more information on the product. It could also be a case of cognitive dissonance where the customer returns to confirm the purchase was right for him
• No clear information on payment. If the right payment method is not available, credit card payment or pay by invoice, the customer may be forced to shop elsewhere. Lack of brand credibility can also be an issue (I don’t trust you with my Visa)
• Not clear wether the product is in stock. If information on delivery is missing, or if its impossible to know wether the item is in stock or not, the customer will go somewhere else
• Unable to meet needs for ordering large quantities of the same product. You’d think this was mainly an issue for customers buying large quantities only, but if placing an order takes a long time to complete, doing the same job more than once becomes an tedious chore
• Too difficult to order. If the ordering procedure is too complicated and requires too much of an effort to go through, we’ve lost

The list goes on…

This excercise proved to be very rewarding. With these theories we will be able to create scenarios giving us insight that can help us understand the reasons why the customers are not buying and do adjustments in the webshop to accomodate for increased sales.

With these scenarios we can create intelligent questions for our survey revealing key issues in user behaviour. In addition, our scenarios will help us:

1. Define tasks for a usability test session
2. Explore specific issues in a user interview
3. Use them with our personas
4. Create user stories

Our next step now is creating the survey questions and implement the survey on our webshop. Hopefully, we’ll gain perspective on our users that will help us increase our conversion rate. Keep watching this spot, I’ll keep you posted on our progress.