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Nottingham Trent

Category
Usability
View site
www.ntu.ac.uk

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the brief

As part of its ongoing programme of refinement Nottingham Trent University commissioned MarketingNet for the third year to conduct usability research into a specific area of their site.

The University Library service were experiencing lower than expected uptake of some of the features of their site and felt that students where not receiving the level of service demanded in their charter. MarketingNet were asked to provide consultancy and recommendations for the in-house web team.

our solution

MarketingNet reviewed the web statistics to identify trends and categorise the online habits of existing users. This intelligence helped to guide the test environment and establish the test scenarios. Using a combination of focus groups and individual tests the usability team used scenario based eye-tracker tests across a broad spectrum of user groups.

On line surveys produced an outstanding 84% return (albeit incentivised by the eponymous Apple iPod), which provided the quantitative evidence validating the initial findings. Competitor university library and on-line retail site where used to benchmark the research.

the results

A series of 'quick' wins where identified and the implementation of these resulted in a significant uptake in use of the core library services.

In addition to the navigation and site structure, key phrasing and terminology was altered to reflect the user needs and level of knowledge. In subsequent tests these simple changes to the text on the site resulted in uplift in comprehension from 58% to 92% across the combined user groups.