Is Searching for Information Easy?

This is one of the important ones at fifteen points. It's a companion to the content test. That's because information on your site isn't much good unless people can find it easily.

Usability research on Web users tells us that there are certain specific things you can do to make your site more usable.

The first one is to organize your site in a way that makes sense to your visitors. That's simple, but it's not easy. The reason that it's not easy is that most of us organize our site so that it makes sense to us. But, we know our organization. We know our jargon. Visitors, especially first-timers, don't know.

That's where your research with potential users can bear fruit. Get them in a room. Sit them down. Then have them describe what they're looking for in their terms. Use their terms. Simple, huh?

Don't stop there. In addition to getting their terms out, you need to find out what their categories are. They may not group things the same way that you do. We do that with my clients by working with the customer group in some sorting exercises. Essentially, we use index cards with words on them, and get them to group those words into categories, adding a category named "if they choose.%

Okay, you've got language and you've got categories. The next thing to help people find things is to limit the clutter.

People make choices most easily if they deal with four or fewer choices at a time. That's basic behavioral research. You make this work for you by grouping things into chunks and limiting the number of chunks to four at any one place.

Finally, there are two specific tools that you can use on your site to make it far easier for folks to find information. The first of them is a "helpä page. That's a page that lays out the site and topics for visitors to help them find what they want. You may do this on your default entry page or you may set up a separate "helpä page or a map of your site. Whatever you do, have one or more of these things. And, make sure there is a link to that "helpä page on every page on the site.

The final tool that you can use is one of the most powerful and the easiest. It's a search engine for your site. Web users love search engines. On sites that have a site-specific search engine, two-thirds of the visitors type a word into the search engine as their first act on the site.

That's good news, because search engines are easy to put on your site. The software is off-the-shelf and often free. There are even services on the Web which will maintain your search engine for you.

That means there's no excuse not to have a search engine. So get one.

Remember, fifteen points are yours if you use the right language, use good categories, and have search aids to make things easier.

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