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stltoday.com Usability Study
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stltoday.com is one of the most popular web sites based in the St. Louis area. This report lists the main findings of the study, with detail on some issues. Please contact us if you are interested in the full report.

Grant Consulting, Inc. sponsored and conducted this study. stltoday.com and Pulitzer Technologies are not associated in any way with the preparation of the study or the reporting of its results.

Summary

In general, users were successful and satisfied in browsing the main sections of stltoday.com and in finding current stories or features of interest. Most users had a positive experience in finding a used car that met a specific criterion. And the home page made a positive first impression on people. They not only found the page attractive but also recognized the main purpose for the web site.

The greatest difficulty came from finding an archived article about a major St. Louis story. No one was successful in finding and acquiring the article. Most were very frustrated with the task. Their degree of frustration strongly suggests changing the design to accommodate archived search. These results also warrant further study on why in general people use the stltoday.com "Site Search" and how successful they are when they do so.

A number of other opportunities for improvement are identified by this study.

Testers

An independent marketing research firm recruited and compensated all test participants.

The six test participants met the following qualifications:

  • Experienced in using the Web.
  • Lived in the St. Louis area for at least 3 months.
  • Read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at least weekly.

Three of the participants have little or no previous familiarity with stltoday.com. The other three had moderate or high familiarity with the web site.

Main Issues

Positives

  • Pleased with related links, follow-up emails and contacts
  • Car searches generally successful and well liked
  • Impression from home page positive and basically accurate
  • Detailed content enjoyed by users
  • Photos engaged users and helped navigation
  • Separate job windows for printing liked
  • Main navigation bar worked well
  • Link to featured employer web site liked
  • Mixed comments about download speed

Commentary

This study serves to offer an example of a usability study on a web site from St. Louis and of interest to most St. Louisans. Usability testing offers the best way to directly know what is happening between your customers and your technology.

Many readers of this web site are unfamiliar with usability testing. Of course, if you haven’t been involved with a usability test, you probably wonder whether or not it is worth the time and effort. If that happens to be the case for yourself, the following questions are offered to you:

  • How many of the above findings impact stltoday.com’s customers? stltoday.com’s prospective customers?
  • How many of these findings impact stltoday.com’s business goals? Revenue goals?
  • How many more findings would other usability studies uncover?
  • How many of these current or future usability findings would be recognized through traffic or “hit” reports?   

A future article will discuss design ideas for addressing the usability issues of stltoday.com. If you have any design suggestions for stltoday.com, please send them via the contact page, or join the web discussion at the180.

Written by Joe Grant
Grant Consulting, Inc.
Posted on August 30, 2001

Edited September 5, 2001
 
Grant Consulting, Inc.
located in metro St. Louis, MO, USA
1013 Bradington Court
Columbia, IL 62236
info@grantconsulting.com
(314) 581-0384
Copyright © 2003 by Grant Consulting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.