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online politics>> online politics: usability issues
online politics: usability issues
All three of the major UK party political sites suffer basic usability problems
that are likely to frustrate and annoy readers. The analysis below shows how
poor site navigation makes it difficult for readers to see where they are in
the site and to navigate back to where they have just been.
The image above shows how the home page link on the Conservative party site is
small and unconventioanlly placed, making it unintuitive for readers. As a
minor issue related to this image, none of the sites link their main logo to
the home page, a well-established standard for all web sites (Neilsen
1999).
Here is a more significant usability problem with the navigation of the Labour
party site.
These usability issues with this lower sub-menu are as follows:
-
it is completely redundant — it offers no links to content that are
not available directly from the top-level navigation bar (see below);
-
it is highly confusing:
-
the title of the sub-menu is 'Making life better', which doesn't match either
of the top-level navigation links leading to it.
-
within this submenu is a link that is also called 'Making life better';
-
another link is carelessly called 'The choice' — it leads to the 'Your choice'
page, a page also available directly from the top-level navigation bar;
-
the two remaining links (to 'Our Policies' and 'In your area') lead
to content also available directly from the top-level navigation bar;
-
it is potentially frustrating for readers
-
the link to 'Making life better' takes you to a page that ONLY contains 3 links
- exactly the same links that are contained in the 'Making life better
sub-menu; the other 3 sub-menu links are merely duplications of top-level
links 'Our Policies', 'In your area' and 'The choice' - are they main pages or
subsidiary pages?
Such instances of poorly designed navigation frustrate and annoy readers and
divert their attention away from gathering the information they came for.
The Liberal Democrat site has the best navigation usability but still leaves
room for improvement. Here, for example are the standard top navigation bars on
all pages of the site.
The upper bar consists entirely of links to top level pages cotaining the main
categories of content within the site. The lower bar, however, contains an odd
mix of top-level pages, sub-pages and sub-sub-pages. This could be confusing
and certainly doesn't help readers to grasp the basic site architecture.
Links:
Conservatives;
Labour; Liberal
Democrats