Usability Question

[kevin_standlee]

If you are kproche or anyone else who has worked on the 2009 World Fantasy Con web site, you're ineligible for this question because you already know the answer.

If you wanted to find you whether you were a member of the 2009 WFC and you went to the convention's web site, where do you think you would find this information, if anywhere? If you can't figure it out, what would you suggest changing to make it easier to find? Update: To do this in the spirit intended, I ask that you don't look at the comments until after at least trying with or without the hints below. The comments essentially give the game away, and I'm trying to learn something.

Hint 1: I assure you that the membership list is on the web site, and it is linked from one of the pages that is linked to the top level; that is, if you are at the home page, you're only two clicks away from it.

Hint 2: When you click on some of the menu items, a second level of menus will appear below the first level if there is more information available.

The underlying issue is that if you label the section "Membership" then people will ask (and they have) "How do I register to attend?" or "How much does the convention cost after I've bought my membership?" or "Why do I have to buy a membership when I only want to attend?" or something like that. If you label it "Registration" (which is what I did after getting those questions too many times), you get people asking "I can't find anything on your web site about membership." And if you label it "Registration/Membership," you use up too much real estate and probably confuse both groups of people.

Some people solve this by linking everything from the home page, but that turns the home page into a sea of nothing but links, and it causes a lot of people's eyes to glaze over. I prefer a heirarchical style, but it's not good for people who don't see logical relationships between the subject headings and the items under that subject.

My basic problem is that I want to make everyone happy, and I think it's impossible to do that because of the significantly different ways that people look at information.

Comments

Re: PS

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

we really didn't get the kinds of how do I register questions that you say you're getting.

I wonder why that is. Maybe there are more potential first-time attendees living within a relatively short travel distance of our WFC?

[johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com]

As a dumb guy, it took me a bit, but part of that was me expecting it to be in a weird place because no one asks questions about these things unless there's some weirdness. In the end, I went with my gut guess and that was right.
Chris

The answer is search!

[petrea-mitchell.livejournal.com]

My answer is that the search function should look at the whole site, not just the blog entries. The search box is your get-out-of-jail-free card when the menu fails. Nearly every major search engine (like, for instance, my favorite (http://clusty.com/sitesearch)) is happy to show you how to construct a widget that will use them to search your site.

[petrea-mitchell.livejournal.com]

I'm not suprised some people have been confused by "Guests"; "Guests of Honor" would be a better label.

If you're going to have submenus, mixing vertical and horizontal menus is a bad idea. Using a different color is a little better. Having expandable menus (which is possible to do without JavaScript) would be better, since someone could at least look at the whole menu hierarchy without clicking.

And lobolance, if you're really interested in Web usability, I highly recommend Alertbox (http://www.useit.com/alertbox).

[lobolance.livejournal.com]

yeah, I get their emails, thanks!

And if you really want to make everyone happy...

[petrea-mitchell.livejournal.com]

...put the WFC site through this tool (http://www.accesskeys.org/tools/color-contrast.html) and act on the results.

I'd also like to say, despite my complaining, this really is one of the better convention Web sites I've seen. (Most convention Web sites, it's clearly not even worth complaining.)