Transcript Designing an Effective Support Site: Making It Easy for Users to Get

Designing an Effective Support Site
(making it easy for users
to get what they want quickly)
Don Bell
Web Learning Consultant
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Copyright Don Bell, 2003.
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Why an effective, well-designed support
site is important
• Think of how many times you’ve gone to a
web site and experienced frustration –
unable to find what you want quickly
• Bad design = wasted time
• Wasted time = lost productivity
• Well-designed sites save users’ time,
reduce load on support staff, contribute to
the overall productivity of the college
Support Site Design Problems
• support people not trained as web
designers – site can resemble farmhouse
additions more than architectural designs
• professional web designers sometimes
create support sites that are ‘pretty’ but not
as functional or usable as they could be
• site architect needs to recognize that most
users are content/solution/speed driven
1. Define Support Site Goals
•
Make it easy for users to move quickly:
–
–
–
–
•
•
get to/load support site homepage
login to courses
navigate around site, perform useful tasks, find
useful information, answers to questions or support
problems
get out of site quickly
Provide rich, useful content, media, links
Facilitate fast support response time
2. Usable/Functional Design Structure
• design whole site at once
• clear, simple, consistent, organizational
structure, user interface, and navigation
• usable, learnable, memorable, interface
• prime screen real estate – center, top right
• shortest path, fewest clicks to find
information
2. Usable/Functional Design Structure
• research web, find good examples, build
on common web design conventions
• fast loading pages, few graphics, small file
size
• See “Usability 101” – Jacob Nielsen
• have fun! - play with the design – try
different things to see what looks good
and works best
3. Add Search Tools
• search tools help users quickly find
relevant information
• More that 50% of users search-dominant
• Provide search on every page
• Use ‘site search’ tool to find specific pages
that match a given keyword
• Use ‘search page’ tool to quickly find
keywords in long web pages
Sample Support Site Design Screen Layout for Fast Access
Most Used Functions in Prime Screen Spots
Breadcrumbs Trail
makes ‘going
back’ navigation
easy
Title Tags help users decide
where to go next; they describe
the link destination when the
cursor hovers on link. For
example, title for ‘Related Links’ –
shows Calendar, Student
Information System (SIS), Library,
Campus Computer Store
Search Site Tool
Easy Access to
Site Navigation
Structure
5. Shared Support Folder
• Use a shared support folder for all support
people related to same support problems
5. Shared Support Folder
6. Test/Revise Design
• before adding content, test design on a
small group of users, different web skill
levels – revisions based on feedback
• New web user profile – impatient, short
attention span, reads little, clicks a lot,
likes fast pages, may bolt early if usability
or response time poor
• Check design against original goals
7. Portable Support Pages
• Printable – print version of long pages
• URL-able – can email support page URL
to user – frames may not allow this
8. Redundant Links
• Site may have several links to important
information – e.g. login, login help,
browser tuneup, FAQs
• College site may have more that one link
to your support site
9. Provide Rich Content
• Rich content makes it a reference site
worth visiting again and again
• support information, FAQs, training
materials/notes, tutorials, links to related
info
9. Provide Rich Content
10. Make Content Searchable
• use focused and highly descriptive
keywords in title tag and meta tags to
improve search retrieval
• Meta tags are information inserted into the
“head area” of web pages
• <meta name="description" content="Main
WebCT Information…">
• <meta name="keywords"
content="WebCT, web, courses, login,
students, faculty">