Website Analysis: Australian National Film and Sound Archive
According to Darlington (1005), an effective website is one that provides value to the audience or visitors, underpinning the goals of the website and the needs of such audience. In this paper, the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) website will be assessed. A website purporting to inform, preserve, render affiliation and generate revenue, NFSA website primarily educates people about Australian screen and sound heritage through specific services such as national programs, access to collections relating to the audiovisual media and expertise in audiovisual preservation techniques. The website also provides downloadable high resolution images, information on screening loans and useful links to other organisations. NFSA website also serves as an online shop selling Australian and other international CDs, DVDs, books and giftware. Heuristically, there are specific features of NFSA website which are inappropriate.
Initially, NFSA website has presentation and color scheme problem. The website makes use of unmatched color combinations while being dull at the same time because the colors are concentrated on a specific place. As Mitchell (2005, p. 50) puts it, color choice is subjective and the combination of these colors pleases the audience aesthetically. However, the author continued that when using colors on the website, designers should choose colors that offer visitors easy access to information, one of the key pointers that NFSA website missed. Particularly, when a visitor moused over a specific section in a page, it changes its colors that did not match with the rest of the sections at all. There is no problem, however, with the font type and size, making it readable. Nevertheless, although the website makes use of font color to present informations regarding the site itself and privacy policies, such features are underemphasized because of the similar font size with the main text. Inconsistent use of font colors for the subheadings in each page is also evident.
Further, the use of images of the website is also disturbing specifically because of the unsuitability of the theme of the image to the page content and there are pages that require images such as the services and preservation pages but are proved to be lacking. The ‘what’s on’ page is overloaded whereas the ‘the collection’ is the page that necessitates a number of image as it features national and specialised collections of audiovisual materials, taking away the pleasant viewing experience. Apart from the missing graphics, another weakness of the NFSA website is the failure to optimise the use of heights and widths and keeping the images in best formats. Addison (2004, p. 82) mentioned that in making a website more effective there must be primary and secondary images to make it more appealing. Ratner (2003, p. 23) also points out that the color schemes and images used in world wide websites impacts perceptual and visual impairments. The universal usability must consider that perceptual impairments and disabilities include difficulties associated with four fundamental senses as vision, hearing, smell and touch with visual disabilities that fall along the continuum.
In terms of flexibility and efficiency of use, NFSA website is poor particularly in aspects of navigating into new windows. Nielsen (n.d.) relates that flexibility and efficiency of use handles the classification of the user as the experienced or experts to the inexperienced or beginners and even intermediate. Such dilemma is evident in the home and shop pages. In the former, there are specific shortcuts to other contents or pages, but the problem is redundancy. Two among the examples of redundancy is the search the collection icon and the site search option and the privacy policy with contents that is also on about this site section. In the latter, the informations regarding the NFSA Shop, new releases and shop catalogue are compressed in the shop page but other sections of such page pops up in new windows. One plausible feature of the shop page, however, is the feedback section although it looks misplaced because considerably it should be in the contact us section. In lieu with this, the contact us part is considerably kept in an easy to find portion of the pages. Realising the principle stipulated by Nielsen (n.d.), there is the possibility that users will be confused especially the beginners in using computer applications. Simply, NFSA is not friendly for first time users although it is clear of what information and services it aims to provide the website’s visitors.
What makes the NFSA website more difficult to navigate is the ‘too-many-clicks’ dilemma. This is apparent in the shop page which is fragmented and lacking of spontaneity. There are three features of this page – Secure Online Purchasing and Ordering Information – which requires careful thought. The rationale behind this is that contextually the pages offer overlapping informations. NFSA must realise that there are risks associated with not investing in Web usability as the quality of websites reflect on the perception of visitors regarding that website. Provided that NFSA website is basically for educating a visitor about Australian’s audiovisual heritage, unacceptable task times such as the too-many-clicks predicament or from an unacceptable rate of errors and confusion during task completion, this may result in unacceptable learning curve of the visitor (Ratner, 2003, p. 66).
NFSA website poorly positioned links that are very important. The menus of each page confuses the visitor as sections are not grouped in a proper order while there are specific sections that must not be in the menu or should be combined in order to avoid redundancy. Although menus are relatively balanced, the problem is on its hierarchical nature (Preece, 1993) wherein some of the sections should be prioritised because it contains more useful information than the other. There are also confusing text like in the New NFSA releases section, it was said that the visitor needs to check back shortly for information on new releases. However, in the shop page, a particular title of a new release was named; New NFSA releases section is under the Shop page notably. It could also be said that NFSA website conforms to non-standard layouts and bad linking system. Visitors could possibly have to go through four to five pages more before they can locate what they are looking for thereby some more links are needed in more appropriate places like what is already mentioned the contact us section. Because of the fact that the website contains poor links, another inherent problem of the website’s design is the ‘from and to’ feature. NFSA website could not track or could lose track of the sections they have already visited. The system is not showing signs or hints to the user that the page is already visited. Nielsen (n.d.) calls this error trapping or the program that detects and responds to navigational errors.
In order for a website to be effective, it should provide the quality and value to the visiting experience. NFSA website has three purposes: informative, archival, affiliation and profit-generation. However, there are specific features or programs of the website that is rather undermining the quality and value of the website itself. First is the problem of presentation and poor color choices and second, the use of images. The colors chosen does not necessarily reflect the ideals of the industry (audiovisual industry, that is) to which NFSA belongs because the website is not creative enough. This is also evident in the choice and non-existence of graphics/images, impacting perceptual and with emphasis on visual difficulties. Third, the website lacks functionality when it comes to navigation; it is not user-friendly. With connection to the third is the problem with locating needed informations. The website requires more than four clicks before landing to the desired page. This is also due to the fact that, fifth, the links are poorly positioned links.
Reference:
Addison, D 2004, Small Websites, Great Results: The Blueprint for Creating Websites that Really Work, Paraglyph Press.
Mitchell, S 2005, Create Your Own Website: Using What You Already Know, Sams Publishing.
Nielsen, J n.d., ‘How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation’.
Preece, J 1993, A guide to Usability: Human Factors in Computing, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley.
Ratner, J 2003, Human Factors and Web Development, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Online Source:
http://www.designersmind.com/articles/the-20-most-common-mistakes-in-website-design/
http://www.itwales.com/998660.htm
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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