Case Study - Building a Usable Site
By Robirda,
reprinted with permission
First publication through Site Point.© April 2002
| Robirda
has been writing all her life, and is dedicated to
educating those interested in learning about the care, taming,
and breeding of small pet birds. Besides writing articles on
various and sundry topics for publishers and editors, Robirda
publishes and edits her popular 'Bird eBooks' and her own ezine,
Flock Talk, acclaimed by experts as one of the best in its field.
She also runs the Canary Cam, and supervises one of the busiest
small-birds message board online, the Birds Board. All this and
much more is available through her website at robirda.com. |
A Website can be both attractive and easy to use. Usability and good looks aren't mutually exclusive and one doesn't necessarily have to negate the other.
When I first came into the online world, I knew nothing of technology, design, or usability. But as my site evolved, I realized that my users had particular characteristics -- if I wanted to keep them, and attract more visitors, I'd have to make my site work for this audience!
Now, over 5 years later, I have a successful site and a loyal member base that's growing all the time. How did it happen? Good question. Here's the story of my success -- and the steps I took to make my site attractive and usable to the largest possible number of users from my target audience.
From Small Beginnings...
I was never a technocrat, that's for sure. I was 35 before I even owned a computer, in the early 90's. It was second-hand, from a university professor a venerable old 286 that had been new in 1986 and had a whopping 40 megs of memory. It did just fine running the word-processing program I'd bought it for.
Along with my day job, I bred and raised canaries, and also did some rehab work with abused or unwanted birds of various species. This became my passion. I assembled, edited and published the local canary club's bulletin, and wrote stories and articles for other clubs, and occasionally for a popular pet bird magazine.
Quite a lot of my spare time was spent teaching new bird owners how to care for their pets; in an attempt to cut down on this time, I wrote a series of basic care and information sheets, that became quite popular among the local clubs and pet stores. Every once in a while I would turn on the computer and write out another info-sheet, or note down a story I couldn't get out of my mind.
That was the complete extent of my technical know-how.
As 1994 wended its way into 1995, every now and then someone would mention the rapidly growing phenomenon of the Internet to me. Several times I'd been told that I would love the inherent potential for communication, but I pooh-poohed the notion. Me? Why, my ancient little 'puter couldn't even run a modem properly!
Then I was given free time at an Internet Cafe as a Christmas present. At first I was positive I'd never be able to use up the entire two hours, but I came away utterly flabbergasted. Even though I'd not been able to find any sites on my favourite topic -- canaries -- I was hooked. I had no idea how, but I knew I was going to get online as soon as I could manage it. And if I couldn't find a good canary site, then I was going to learn to build one!
Building a Usable Site/Getting Online/User Research/Compatibility and Display/Applying the Lessons/Readable Fonts/Live Testing/My Usability Checklist/Looking Ahead |
