In the early 1990s, Jakob Nielsen and Ralf Molich developed and presented 10 principles for solving web usability problems in terms of User Expierience (UX) and User Interface (UI). Although Nielsen's 10 heuristics were initially heavily criticized, today, after three decades, they form the basis for the work and conduct of courses and trainings in the field of website usability.
Heuristic analysis
Heuristic analysis is very often the activity from which one begins UX audit pages. It allows you to relatively easily and quickly find potential usability issues that make site users less likely to convert. In addition, heuristics will help to generate constructive conclusions, helpful in further work on the usability of the site.
Advantages of the heuristic method
A very important advantage of heuristic analysis is that it works at every stage of service design, i.e. on sketches and mock-ups, prototypes, test versions and finally finished pages. The conclusions obtained during the expert heuristic analysis will help to choose the appropriate means of development of the site.
Heuristic analysis is one of the studies that allow to evaluate the usability of a website. It should be carried out by experts in the field of UX. A qualified specialist, based on his own experience, good practices and knowledge of the needs of users, proposes solutions that can increase the intuitiveness, ease of use of the service and, as a result, the conversion rate.
Heuristic analysis can be used in parallel with other methods of website usability research.
An overview of the 10 heuristics of Jakob Nielsen and Ralf Molich
10 Nielsen and Molich's Heuristics Are generally formulated guidelines. Based on them, you can identify elements in the service that need improvement in terms of usability. The indicated problems should be tested in order to subsequently be able to clearly determine whether they require optimization.
So let's move on to discussing all 10 utility heuristics.
1. Show system status
Websites or specific software should be created with people who have never used them before - for example, by creating an online store, you certainly aim to acquire new customers who will only make a purchase when they enter a simple and intuitive shopping path and nothing along the way raises their doubts. Therefore, it is essential that the user of the website or application is always informed about the status of the action he takes and what he can do next.
The basic elements that inform the user about the place where he is and the status of the actions taken include:
- title tag,
- heading H1,
- designations of active menu categories,
- breadcrumbs.
2. Keep the system consistent with reality
With this heuristic, it is primarily about avoiding jargon that will be incomprehensible to users. It is worth letting go of the enigmatic terms. It is necessary to explain the effect of the actions performed by the user of the website in a simple and understandable way for everyone. This applies to both verbal and graphic messages. An example here is music streaming services, where the buttons of the player function correspond to those that are perfectly known from tape recorders that have been used for decades.
The user should read your page like an open book. Therefore, it is worth sticking to accepted standards, such as placing an internal search engine on the right side of the menu or marking links with a blue font color and underlining.
It is also very important to inform the user about what will happen when you click on a given item. Here, a classic example of clearly communicating the effect of an action is the CTA buttons, for example “buy now”.
3. Give the user full control
Users of websites feel more confident if they have full control over what they do at the time of visiting the site. Therefore, they should be able to act freely, e.g. easily change the store category, remove products from the cart or cancel further steps in the shopping pathIn other words, giving up the purchase.
Before the final step, i.e. making a purchase, the user must still be able to cancel (preferably without having to give a reason), and must also be informed that the action taken at that moment is already irreversible — e.g. “I order with obligation to pay” button.
4. Stick to standards and stay consistent
You have to take into account that website users like the solutions adopted and expect them to be applied to all the pages they visit. In this context, Jakob Nielsen and Ralf Molich have developed a convention of external and internal consistency, thanks to which the users of the site will not have to think about every element of the site, but will understand them from the slot machine and use them intuitively.
External consistency is a generally accepted standard that works in almost all services. Its elements include:
- linking to the main page of the logotype, which is placed in the upper left corner or at the top in the middle of the page;
- search engine and cart symbol in the upper right corner of the page;
- main menu, located at the top or side of the page, and on the mobile device when you click on the icon of three horizontal bars.
Internal consistency is maintaining a single stylistic convention throughout the service, for example, uniform fonts, consistent colors, button highlights when hovering over them, placement of descriptions or how to inform about the consequences of actions and errors.
5. Prevent errors
This heuristic is intended to help prevent the user from making a mistake as effectively as possible. For this purpose, use is made of, among others. information about the sale of the product or the lack of availability of the selected variant (e.g. “Sold out” or “Notify me of availability” button). It is also very important to facilitate at the time of entering the required data by the user, for example by preparing formats for entering the address, postal code or telephone number.
6. Show instead of forcing to remember
Online stores have great opportunities to be able to effectively remind users of the actions they were going to take or have taken, but due to many actions they could forget about them. Therefore, it is worth placing sections “Recently viewed”, which will help to quickly find previously viewed products that the user did not buy on the first visits to the site, but intends to do so. This is especially important when the user has trouble finding them manually, for example because he forgot the name of the product, the search results have changed or the category structure has changed in the store.
They are also helpful cart previews — the buyer can check that all the products he intends to buy are in it without entering and leaving the cart.
7. Flexibility and efficiency
This Nielsen and Molich heuristic is simply to make it easier and shorter to perform all activities within the site. Some functional examples include:
- checkbox “Select all” when expressing consents;
- the ability to copy the basket from recent purchases;
- the ability to select multiple filters and click the “Filter” button instead of the filters automatically loading after selecting each one individually.
Especially the lack of this last facilitation can be an annoying UX bug. Suppose you want to buy a white, cotton shirt with a long sleeve and an Italian collar, in size 40. Now imagine how much faster you will be shown products that meet all the conditions when you check all the filters and click “Done”. than when the results will filter automatically every time you click five (!) filters (color, material, sleeve, collar type, size).
8. Take care of aesthetics and moderation
Here, in principle, you can limit yourself to the statement “less is more”. The order or registration forms should contain only the most important information and the necessary options, provided in an aesthetic and transparent form.
9. Provide efficient error handling
Here we have a reference to the fifth heuristic. If, despite the best efforts, the user has made a mistake, it must be clearly pointed out to him and prompted for a solution. An example here will be clear messages, e.g.”Login XXX is already busy” and suggesting you choose login XXX11. Similarly in the case of passwords — if the password proposed by the user does not meet the conditions, it is worth clearly telling him what he should add to it, e.g. “Password must contain a capital letter.”
10. Take care of help and documentation
Simple and intuitive solutions can not be applied in every interface. Some systems will be more complex by nature, so the user will need help, such as a tutorial, a help section or an extensive FAQ section (frequently asked questions). It is important that these sections are transparent and clearly explain the problem. This will make it easier for users to cope with it on their own and will not have to contact the support directly or - which no owner of the site wishes - close the pages.
summary
Using Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics, you can create a list of elements present in a given website that will need to be precisely tested and verified during the development of the site structure. It is difficult to imagine a better start to work on improving the site in this regard. However, what is the most important thing in all this? Heuristic analysis will allow you to make changes that will directly translate into the conversion rate, which in turn is a measurable business indicator.
