I was not surprised by the results of Gary’s test, and for a long time have only used select element with extreme caution. Because the first site I ever worked on some 11 years ago, the designer decided to use as much space as possible for two lead promotional pieces on the home page and placed the navigation in a select element, with some explicit instructions on how to use it.

Unfortunately, visitors did not use it. The figures where pretty scary, of those who started on the home page and visited another page. Roughly 30% used the select list to navigate away from the home page to content. Less than 20% went to a lead article and over 50% went straight from the home to the search page (which was a separate link from the navigation). Where the majority after three searches left the site.

Armed with these statistics, the home page was redesigned, the select was replaced with a visible content list, the number of promotional pieces dropped to one. The results were dramatic, the number of people who visited more than one page increased by more than 10%. The number of visitors who went straight from the home page to search page went from over 50% to less than 20%. In other words, the number of people using the navigation more than doubled, going from 30% to well over 60%.

Another interesting fact was the average number of searches per visitor to the search page went down from 3 to a little over 1. Which indicated search orientated people, went straight to the search page, knowing what terms to search for. Instead of frustrated visitors not knowing where to find the content and unsure of the terminology used.

This experience, which showed that over 50% of all visitors did not use a select element. Has made me very cautious about using select elements. Sure it was 11 years ago, but I do believe that user behaviour has changed that much since then.

I do not want to track your every mouse move, click or keystroke on this site, I know what most the problems are with this site and will fix it with the next redesign. What I really want to do is have a good look at RobotReplay, because it could be very useful for a couple of upcoming projects.

Let me know if you experience any problems using this site over the next few days, I would like to see if there any performance issues.

Hat tip Tara Hunt

It would not surprise me, that it was one web development company that created a quote application for one insurance company and then sold the application to other insurance companies, the message stating IE was required was remarkable similar and condescending. It would of been a relatively easy sale, company X and Y are providing online quotes, you need to do it or miss out.

The problem is now you have the great majority of insurance companies fighting for 85% of the market. The 15% of internet users who use an operating system other that windows or a web browser other than internet explorer, and these are the tech savvy and with a higher income than the average internet users are only being served by very few insurance companies. The only one I found was www.australianunity.com.au

I am sure the bean counters behind the sites that require IE would argue that that at the time their site would provide quotes to 95% of all customers. But that was then, now if my sample of insurance companies is roughly right and only one in six insurance companies support browsers other than IE. You have 100% of the insurance companies serving 85% of potential customers and 15% (1 in 6) of the insurance companies serving 15% of potential customers (Mac, Linux, Firefox, Opera, etc users). Which mean companies like australianunity.com.au are probably doing twice the business online that the IE only companies are. It is simple mathematics 85% divided by 6 is %15 share + 15% not tapped by the other companies. Compare to 85% divided by 6, %15 share for the IE only companies.

There is also something called the Disabilities Discrimination Act, which makes it illegal to discriminate against disabled users in Australia. Maguire vs SOCOG anyone?. An insurance companies that requires a visually impaired user who chose a Mac or Linux computer because the screen reading software is free is required to purchase a new operating system, new screen reading software and to pay for somebody to install it (at least $1500) just to use the insurance company’ web site, really needs to assess what will happen if somebody makes a complaint.

Also had a few interesting experiences using various insurance companies sites but that is another post.

Ethical blogging note, I chose to link to one insurance company because they are doing the right thing as far as browser choice goes. They are not my insurance company, yet.

browser choice, good business , bad business

I will be doing a presentation on the button element, going into more detail that what I have already done here. Do not worry if you are not located in this obscure corner of the world called Perth, Western Australia. I will post the presentation here and the scary part is that it should be podcast as is happening with most WSG events.

Not a problem I thought, just use babelfish.altravista.com to translate the web pages on the fly it will be easy. That idea fell at the first hurdle, the preview/select font for download is done in flash. Once I worked out you need to tell the flash application how many CPU’s you intended to use the fonts on (I was greedy I said 2, both Mac & PC), the next thing you had to do was register. Other than having to change my the postcode from 6167 to 12247. I managed to navigate the seven part registration download process without needing any translation (all these pages where HTML and capable of translation) because the process was logical and at the end of each page was two buttons, the one on left in red took you back a step the one on the right in green took you to the next step.

That got me thinking about usability and using colour to convey additional information. As a web designer you are bombarded that you should not use colour to convey information, because around 12% of the population have problems distingushing colours. As such a lot of web designers do not even try to use colour to convey additional information. Which is a shame, because colour is a tool that you can use to make it more intuitive for the remaining 88% of the population.

Just don’t say press the green button to start, otherwise you are not only disadvatanging people with colour deficencies but also users of Safari and Camino because of the way they render buttons. OK that makes it roughly 20% of users can not see coloured buttons, but the other 80% still have a can get the additional contextual information that colour allows. Below the buttons I have also included screen shots from Firefox and Camino.

Firefox Buttons

Camino Buttons