European web designers are churning out poor text legibility, unclear menus and confusing task flows, reveals a recent study by Forrester Research.
Nine top European web design agencies offered two of their best reference sites to the research group for rigorous review. Forrester reported it was surprised at the blunders, which it stated “are all well-researched usability problems, often with known solutions.”
The research group went on to state: “Customer experience experts can fix these problems by simply applying scenario design principles and better standards for text fonts and sizes, and by using web analytics to identify task-flow problem spots.”
The principles of design govern how elements, including balance, scale, proportion and contrast, are arranged on a website.
Many issues, such as small, unreadable fonts, are certainly widespread on the Web. However, these problems should become less common as more web types become specialized and improve their skills, and overall web standards naturally progress as a result of competitive pressures.
Fortunately, usability professionals are spreading the good word: simply creating content is not sufficient. Website content needs to be well planned, executed and delivered to drive sales, service, productivity and image.
Quality content creates value, generates results and builds success. Poor web content spawns failure.
They were surprised with this study? I could have surfed the web for 10 minutes and given the same findings :).
We shouldn’t pick on European web designers. Designers around the world are creating mediocre websites.