Usability - Interaction with Web Pages

Interaction with a web page differs from interaction with a book. This page must yield its contents immediately so web pages are rarely 'read'.

A visitor has several keywords or phrases in the back of his mind before the web page loads - for instance 'Bali backpacker'. If the website's business involves the two words, it had better inform the visitor right on the home page. 'Backpacker accommodation',' backpacker activities', 'backpacker comments' are some of the phrases our visitor would expect.

He will use pattern recognition rather than reading to find them by scanning only the first three paragraphs of the page. This is referred to as the 'F' pattern.

If the words occur in these passages of text, the visitor will examine the web page in more detail and may explore the site. This is what we hope for.

Usability specialists use heat sensitive screens that record the time spent on any part of the page by the viewer's retina. This is called 'eyetracking' and creates a type of thermal image. This image can be integrated from several users of the web page and will record the amount of time they spend on any part of the page. It is useful for highlighting areas (like links) that attract and that repel interest.

Volunteers for usability studies are not web experts and their answers to questions are not given inordinate weight. They and the actions of their mouses are recorded. What they say they did and what did are not the same.

Journalistic principles do carry over from the printed medium world. Start the page with a précis of what's on the rest of the page. For the home page, that will be paraphrased accounts of what is on the rest of the website.