How a Change on Design Improves Usability and Visits

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Alexis Brion

A small change could improve a website usability a lot. Sometimes, that could also drive a lot a traffic to it. I have a clear example about that. These are the Design vs Art Blog feed subscription stats:

Reading the graphic it is possible to deduce the following:

1 After an initial flat phase I changed the position of the "Feeds" logo from the bottom of the website to the top. The resulting effect was the first big jump in subscriptions (around 300% in less than a month).

Design vs Art Blog Showing Usability Improvement

2 After a second "flatish" short period (second, bigger bubble on image 1) I added some instructions to the RSS Feed logo: "Subscribe to Feed, get every week fresh articles"

Lesson

A Put the tools the people need and you want to promote in a prominent position, do not assume that users will look for them.

B Tell users what you are actually offering, do not rely on images and icons. Telling people that the Design vs Art Blog is updated every week is encouraging them to subscribe.

C This tips have a marketing impact but they could be applied to everything that is on a website, potentially improving usability with a few changes.

Firefox 3: Why Tabs Are Upside Down?

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Alexis Brion

Installing the new Firefox 3 was an easy task. The browser seems to work, on a Mac, better than the previous version. Although that, Firefox still has some usability issues. I don’t want to make a complete review but I would like to highlight the first issue I noticed: using the default skin, the tabs are upside down and not linked to the page they refer.

Tabs should be attached to pages. This is not a new idea, as you can see on the picture tabs has been used in this way for ages. When I have doubts about a new design I tend to look for ideas in the real world…

Files with tabs

Picture by Takashi

The Firefox 3 Approach

I think that Mozilla was just trying to ~~copy~~ the Apple Safari look without thinking if the Apple solution was perfect. In my opinion this tab design is not going to be a problem at all for old users. On the other side it could be troublesome for inexperienced ones: They just don’t notice that those are tabs.

Tabs are hanging from the Bookmarks Toolbar:

Firefox 3 Tabs A

Changing tabs:

Tabs should be linked to the page, not to the menu. A simple mental model…

Designs on Public Transportation Directions

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Alexis Brion

Google public transportation directions is a great tool. With it you can easily know how to get to an specific place using the best combination of buses, trains and other kinds of public transportation. This could be a great success in Europe, where people are used to go everywhere by public transportation.

The Power of Design

This kind of websites already exist in Europe but it is usually offered by local companies, like the city-specific Transport for London website. Unfortunately, most of these were not very successful adapting for the web great design developed previously for paper. Last weekend I stopped by the Munich central station to get a paper timetable, old style but easy to understand, even if you don’t speak German language. This is the German Trains timetable for the Berlin – Munich connection:

(click to enlarge)

The Copenhagen city transport website has a less lucky approach, as you can see in the picture below, reading is not that easy. (I use Copenhagen as an example but this is actually happening in several European cities like Munich, London and others).

(click to enlarge)

The Google Design

The Google Maps approach is by far the best I have found. It is clear, fast and has a printer friendly version. It is also highly interactive, something that others don’t have: e.g. the Munich website displays maps only in PDF format (horrible.)

If you are not familiar with the Google public transportation service, have a look at the following video for a quick introduction.