Benchmarking / examples of good practice

At the last Web Group meeting Ben and Michelle fed back about work they (along with Amanda and Stuart) did looking at other websites (the report is in the Web Group 'Research' folder).

They reviewed 15 sites (a mxture of commercial websites, and both UK and overseas academic and public libraries), looking at their structure, navigation, usability etc to see if we could find examples of good practice and innovation.

These are the sites covered:

British Library

University of Edinburgh Information Services

Imperial College London Library

University of Manchester John Rylands Library

UCL Library Services

MIT

New York Public Library

North Carolina State University

Queensland University of Technology

State Library of Victoria

Amazon

BBC Online

eBay

Wikipedia

You Tube

More stuff to read!

In the Writing for the Web session in April, Richard Ashby recommended a Gerry McGovern book: Content critical. We have copies of this available in the Library

And, I've just started reading Letting go of the Words : writing Web content that works by Ginny Redish, which so far is really interesting...

Useful reading

Summarised from our earlier emails. Anything else to add...?

Jacob Nielsen's blog on web usability
Steve Krug's website on usability

Designing web usability. Jacob Nielsen, 2000.
Prioritizing Web usability. Jacob Nielsen, 2006.
Don't make me think! : a common sense approach to web usability. Steve Krug, 2005.
Rocket surgery made easy: the do-it-yourself guide to finding and fixing guide usability problems. Steve Krug, 2009.

Jakob Nielson's latest post

Check out the latest item on JN's site http://www.useit.com/alertbox/students.html - all about how 'college students' use the web. Some realy useful stuff

Questions to ask users

1. How often do you use the Library website?

2. What do you use the Library website for?
[Which areas of the Library website do you use regularly?]

3. Can you [always] find what you need?

4. Is there anything you have difficulty finding?

5. Is there anything you would like more information about?

6. What don’t you like about the Library website?

[Are there items on the Library homepage that you do not understand?]
[Are there any items missing from the Library homepage?]

7. Perhaps multiple questions?: [Have you used the (A-Z/Search/Catalogue) to find something you were looking for?]
[If Yes, were you successful in finding what you were looking for?]

8a. How do you get to the Library website (bookmark, from University website, from Portal, other?)
8b. Do you always start at the Library homepage or do you go straight to specific pages?

9. How do you find the pages you want - navigating menu, using site index, using search box, using external search engine, other?