customer success by design
articles and links
 

stltoday.com Usability Study --
Difficulties due to unclear or misleading links

Several links on the site were unclear or misled users. For example, some users took the “Desired vehicle is not listed on this page" link to mean that they were not looking at any cars that met their search criteria. In fact, the link simply provides a way to go back to the search page. (Note: This link has been changed since the study was done in early August, and now reads, “Return to Main Search Page".)

Example of misleading link from stltoday.com
From stltoday.com. (The "Desired vehicle..." link has been changed since the study was done.)

Other links that were unclear or misleading include “urban diary,” “Research this vehicle”, and the links that appear at the end of an article to related stories.

back to main page of stltoday.com usability study

Written by Joe Grant
Grant Consulting, Inc.

Posted on August 30, 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.

What an actual usability test looks and sounds like...

In this scenario, someone tries to find an archived story about Mark McGwire.

Windows Media Player, 100k streaming
4 min.
9 min.

RealPlayerG2, 80k speed
4 min.
9 min.

Best Playback -- Windows Media AVI file, includes codec install
4 min. 13 Mg download
9 min. 38 Mg download

Contact us if you want files sent to you via CD or other means.

Also available...
usability storyboard --illustrates how usability testing works