Introduction
A heuristic evaluation of the localisation page and home page of www.eurostar.com was conducted on March 13th, 2004. This report presents the findings and recommendations arising from the evaluation.
The site is primarily intended for use by the general public to purchase travel tickets and find travel information. A secondary use of the website is for investors, potential employees and train enthusiasts to view company and technical information.
The reviewer spent 2 hours using the site, and evaluated it against a set of accepted guidelines ("heuristics").
The review was carried out on a PC running Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6, at a resolution of 1024x768.
Executive Summary
In the main, the web site is well presented and has a professional appearance.
The primary user task of buying tickets is well supported with a highly visible ticket booking function on the homepage.
The secondary user task of accessing corporate and technical information is supported via a link from the homepage.
However, there is opportunity for improvement in three areas:
- Localisation: Customers do not have enough control over localisation settings, meaning some sales could be lost.
- Scannability: Many buttons, links and headings should be reworded to make content easier and faster to read and comprehend.
- Accessibility: The site does not provide accessible content (for example, none of the images have "alt" text).
Recommendations
This report recommends addressing each of the issues identified.
Many of the issues can be resolved or at least improved without major re-design.
However, it is recommended that:
- A facility be provided to change the localisation settings from the home page. The localisation options should also be reviewed to check that they are appropriate for existing and potential customers.
- A full accessibility evaluation of the site be carried out to check that the it complies with the UK Government's regulations on access to services for the disabled.
Each issue is discussed in the body of this report, and recommendations are made for addressing them.
Detailed Findings
The following tables contain detailed findings for a total of 23 usability issues. A severity rating has been assigned to each issue, depending on the probable impact on customers. Key to severity ratings
The findings can be grouped by type of heuristic, severity level or location by using the links below.
Localisation page (7 issues)
| Severity | Heuristic | Issue | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medium | Control | The choices in the localisation menu may be too restrictive - For example, it is unclear what option to choose if you are in France but you speak English. | Provide an explanation of how the localisation setting will affect the customer's experience, and/or provide a clear link to language changing options somewhere on the top navigation bar on the home page. |
| Medium | Control | The options provided in the localisation menu are sometimes arbitrary. For example, Dutch is not offered for The Netherlands although it is available for Belgium, and French is offered for France and Belgium but not available for Switzerland or Canada. | Review the localisation policy. |
| Medium | Control | Clicking on "Website terms and conditions", "Privacy Policy" or "Conditions of Carriage" brings up a javascript-generated popup window which is far too small for the content and the ability to resize the window has been disabled. | Comparing these links to how they are displayed on the home page, it seems that the width and height attributes of the window have been reversed by mistake. |
| Medium | Visibility | The window title would benefit from a tagline to describe what the Eurostar is, as 'Eurostar bookings, timetables, fares, city breaks, and special offers' may sound more like a holiday company. | A more direct tagline could be "Eurostar - The direct high-speed passenger train operating between London, Paris and Brussels". |
| Medium | Visibility | There is no tagline on the home page to describe what the website is about. | A straightforward tagline on this page would indicate to customers that they are in the right place. For example: "Eurostar - The direct high-speed passenger train operating between London, Paris and Brussels". |
| Low | Language | The label above the localisation menu may be difficult to scan: "Country of residence/Language - Pays de résidence/Langue - Land waarin u woont/Taal". | Display the labels as bullet points or insert spaces to make the text more readable. |
| Low | Language | The localisation menu shows a bias for English on first row: "Country / Language". Does the number of English visitors to the site warrant the use of English as the first visible menu option? | Check the site logs or marketing records for the proportion of English speaking visitors, and use the dominant language for the first visible menu option. |
Home page (16 issues)
| Severity | Heuristic | Issue | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Control | There is no apparent way to change the localisation settings from the home page and it is not possible to return to the localisation page once a setting has been chosen. Although this should not affect customers accessing the site from their own computer, it may seriously affect customers attempting to book their tickets on a shared computer from public access points such as offices, libraries or internet cafes. | Provide a clear link to language changing options somewhere on the top navigation bar. |
| High | Error prevention | Clicking on the main Eurostar logo leads to a page with no content and top navigation menu items in Dutch. The news ticker repeats a miss-spelled "No news avalaible". | De-activate the link as soon as possible (This error has since been corrected). |
| Medium | Consistency | The Eurostar logo on the top left of the page is clickable, so users may think that they are not already on the home page. | Deactivate the logo link. |
| Medium | Consistency | Clicking on the main Eurostar logo on the empty Dutch page leads back to the working English homepage. | Users expect the logo in the top left of a web page to bring them back to the home page, not change language. Provide a clear link to language changing options somewhere on the top navigation bar. |
| Low | Aesthetic and minimalist design | The image directly beneath the story on Lille is a stock marketing image that communicates nothing about the content of the story. | This space would be better used by a picture that is relevant to the story, to increase scannability. |
| Low | Consistency | "Log-in" is a depreciated term. | Use the standard non-hyphenated form: "Login". |
| Low | Consistency | The difference between "BOOK NOW" on the top navigation menu and the booking area in the middle of the page is not clear. | Re-evaluate the difference between both booking areas and make the differences obvious, otherwise eliminate the booking option on the top navigation menu. |
| Low | Consistency | The news ticker shows business news, so it may be more appropriate to have it in the "About Eurostar" section with the other business information. | The news ticker may be more effectively used by showing news of special offers for travellers rather than business news. |
| Low | Consistency | Under the Lille headline, the whole paragraph is linked. It is not advisable to link a whole paragraph as customers have to read the most of the text before knowing where the link goes. | Provide a link at the bottom of the paragraph which clearly and simply states where the link goes, for example "More information on Lille 2004...". |
| Low | Consistency | The placement of "Website terms and conditions", "Privacy Policy" and "Conditions of Carriage" links has been reversed compared with the localisation page. | Keep the placement of elements consistent so that they are always where users expect to find them. |
| Low | Consistency | In the newsletter section, the difference between the two links to "Privacy Policy" is not clear. There is also inconsistent capitalisation of the two links. | If the privacy link placement is kept the same as in the localisation page, the privacy link will be underneath the newsletter sign up and a second link will not be necessary. |
| Low | Language | The title on the news ticker, "Eurostar's news" is slightly 'clunky'. | A smoother title may be "Eurostar news". |
| Low | Language | This headline on the left-hand news section "Lille 2004 - Join the culture club" looks like a marketing pitch, instead of real news of interest. It is hard to access the meaning of the story when scanning the home page. | The headline needs to be more direct and scannable. For example: "Lille - European Capital of Culture 2004". |
| Low | Visibility | There is no feedback to indicate that the news headlines on the news ticker are clickable. | Amend the site stylesheet to underline the story links on mouseover. |
| Low | Visibility | The "About" and "contact us" links are important links that may not be very visible on bottom right of the page. | "About" and "contact us" are high profile links that should be immediately visible on the top navigation bar. |
| Low | Visibility | The function of the arrow button is not clear when scanning the page. | Function buttons need an information carrying word for scannability. The newsletter sign-up button should read "Subscribe", and the "log-in" button should read "Login". |
Severity ratings
Critical
An emergency condition that causes the customer's system to fail or causes customer data to be lost or destroyed. A showstopper usability bug can also be one that is likely to cause frequent data integrity errors. There is no workaround to these problems. A key feature needed by many customers is not in the system.
High
A serious condition that impairs the operation, or continued operation, of one or more product functions and cannot be easily circumvented or avoided. The software does not prevent the user from making a serious mistake. The usability problem is frequent, persistent, and affects many users. There is a serious violation of standards.
Medium
A non-critical, limited problem (no data lost or system failure). It does not hinder operation and can be temporarily circumvented or avoided. The problem causes users moderate confusion or irritation.
Low
Non-critical problems or general questions about the product. There are minor inconsistencies that cause hesitation or small aesthetic issues like labels and fields that are not aligned properly.
*Severity ratings adapted from 'Usability severity codes' by Usability & Technical Documentation, Xerox Corporation, July
1995
*Report format adapted from http://www.infodesign.com.au/ftp/SampleWebsiteEvaluation.pdf