Technical Blog 0.1.1

The topic for this week is to analyze three of my favorite websites for their visual appeal, purpose, and user experience. I began this challenge by doing some research on each of these three aspects. (This research was Powered by Google so take it with a grain of salt.)

Googling "website visual appeal" brought up this site about... website visual appeal. So I did a quick skim through the article. Two German scientists performed website evaluations and came up with five characteristic pairs that could very accurately predict a website's appeal:

What was almost as interesting were the two pairs that did not help predict visual appeal:

However, another research team found rating a website's appeal could be boiled down to two questions:

The latter of the two seems to contradict the German results a bit. The most interesting tidbit I picked up from this article is the appearance and usability of a site has a very strong correlation with a user's trust in the site and product.

Next, I googled "website purpose" and came up with a Forbe's article "What is the purpose of your website?" Unfortunately, a Forbe's writer is going to be focused solely on business-related "opinio-facts". And sure enough, his bias is your website's purpose should be one of the following three:

He's probably right. If a site's purpose is to generate revenue then it would typically need to accomplish at least one of those three things. For example, Ebay sells its auction service, establishes credentials for its buyers and sellers, and generates leads via a search index of its auctions as well as through a constant bombardment of email (FFS, Ebay, I will only ever need one hood latch cable. Stop sending me those damn listings). I asked myself, "are there any successful sites that don't perform at least one of those three things?" Even most government-owned sites now provide some sort of transactional function. As much as I hate to agree with the idea that your site has to be selling something, I think it may be true.

So my last Google for this morning, "website user experience". The first hit, a .gov providing UX information? Are you fucking kidding me? I cancelled my E-pass last week. After drudging through their painfully ugly and unclear UI I had to confirm my choice to cancel three times. The site informs me I will recieve a confirmation email. The email arrives 3 hours later! The government knows UX? I'll eat my fucking shoe. So here goes. According to Usability.gov, and well-published author Peter Morville, a user-experience should reflect these six principles:

Well, that sounds legit. Those are all words I could also describe my shoes with but, then again, I do enjoy the user experience of a good pair of shoes. The site describes each of these six terms a bit and moves on to what areas of expertise are related to user experience. I find this list is a bit more in depth and thought provoking:

Now thats a thorough table of technology terms! I feel like the three 'design' titles could be justifiably melded into one but otherwise, those all feel very accurate to what must go into a great UX engineer. Turns out my shoes taste a lot like chicken-flavored enmity.

This research finally brings me back to my favorite three websites. I've crafted my scorecards based off the three information sources found earlier. Its unfortuately difficult to pick 'favorite' sites that aren't boring. Boring, meaning you know these sites, you've been to these sites a thousand or more times, etc. So I bent my interpretation of "favorite" to refer to sites I think are interesting. Here are the results listed by rank:

Patatap

I stumbled on this site while browsing Hacker News. It makes pretty pictures and interesting noises when you smash your keyboard. The interface is clear, simple and attractive. Its useful until its boring. At which point, each subsequent visit is less and less entertaining. Credible? I totally believe in its ability to do its purpose of entertaining me.

XKCD

The classic tech-related comic hasn't made any significant changes to its page in as long as I remember. Its not the prettiest. The purple background is reminiscent of early 2000's web styling which really stings the attractiveness rating. However, its pretty clear and simple on what the site's purpose is which leads to its high credibility. It always humors me, pushing up its usefulness score, and I've often considered buying some of the products they offer, although they have scored a conversion on me yet.

Wikipedia

Ok, Wikipedia is not a new, interesting site. But I thought it could be an important reflection as it is a site that doesn't attempt to generate a profit. Its fairly clear and attractive but tends to be a little cluttered. I use it upwards of daily. The content is usually accurate enough for my needs. But the most interesting rating is its capabliity to sell something. I originally passed over this with a zero since Wikipedia is well known not to sell anything whatsoever. But then I realized, it is the only site of these three that I've spent any money on. In fact, I've donated a few bucks to Wikipedia once a year for the last three years! What makes Wikipedia convert me more consistantly than these other sites? Its not because its attractiveness or clearness scores. They are significantly lower than Patatap's. Its not because of its credibility, either, as its three points lower than both of the other two sites. That only leaves its pegged out usefulness, which trumps all the others.

So now the question is...

Does this mean I've stumbled upon the one metric that can accurately predict how successful a website will be? Does a high usefulness score equal stacks on stacks on stacks? Maybe, just maybe, the Forbes writer isn't completely right! I ended up finding the answer to this million dollar question, beyond a shadow of doubt, at end of this hyperlink...