Greenville City Website
A Shifting Sitemap that Loses Users
Greenville, the key city of South Carolina’s upstate area, is both home to large companies and famous for maintaining a “small town” feel. The city website features the typical services available, with an emphasis on parks and events. However, the website’s navigation and search feature were causing visitors to get lost and confused during their visit. In examining the website, we found ourselves asking: “How can we help the average users quickly find everything they’re looking for without getting confused?”
Greenville residents and outside visitors alike make use of the site, and all ages and demographics need to find it useful. The scope of impacted users is quite broad.
I am a UX/UI student at DigitalCrafts, and performed this study on my own as part of my course work.
Most of the users who participated in this study had never used the site before, but provided valuable feedback. As a research project, the recommendations for improvement are limited.
The first step was to perform a heuristic evaluation, using the 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design from the Nielsen Norman Group. This immediately exposed problems users later discussed in interviews. I discovered that, while the site overall was strong, there were problems with consistency in navigation that made things confusing.
Next time I think I would want to evaluate a few more pages.
I used a set of 10 criteria for comparing Greenville’s home page with the home pages of Charlotte, Charleston, and Atlanta. I chose these cities as nearby communities that have a lot in common.
I discovered that, while most of the features were the same, a couple of sites had some intriguing aids to navigation that the Greenville site doesn’t have. Similar websites all struggle with some of the same problems with overloaded navigation.
Greenville City: Competitive Analysis
I used Google Forms to look for people who have used the Greenville site to perform some action. I chose this method to narrow down the possibilities when arranging for an interview.
I was only able to find a few people who had used the site who would do an interview, but as able to talk to a number of new users who tried it out for the interview. I also included a question about being a native English speaker, and found that not speaking English natively was not a hinderance to using the site.
I prepared a discussion guide of 10 questions, along with suggestions on things for the user to try to find on the site if the questions don’t elicit much response.
Real discussion with real users is critical for finding out if my perceptions of the website are consistent with real user experiences.
Greenville City: Discussion Guide
I specifically looked for (and found) some non-native English speakers to see if language could be a barrier to using text-heavy navigation.
I found that, on the whole, people were able to find what they were looking for. However, the constantly changing menu was especially disorienting to those using a mobile device instead of a desktop computer. Contrary to my expectations, mobile use was a greater hinderance to navigating the site than not being a native English speaker.
While playing back recordings of the interviews, I created virtual “sticky notes” in FigJam, using a different color for each interview subject. This was to look for consistent patterns in what different users were saying.
I organized the notes into groups to see where the bulk of the comments were. I found that complaints about navigation dominated, with complaints about search coming in second. With navigation and search being so closely related, this pointed out to an overwhelming problem with users finding what they’re looking for.
I created a fictional persona, Charles Fisher, to generally represent the feedback received during user interviews. This is to make the subject more personal while maintaining anonymity for the interview subjects. I further filled out some information about Charles to make him more personal - such as interests and motivations.
In thinking about Charles’s problem, I came up with a simple but direct Problem Statement: “How might we help Charles quickly find everything he’s looking for without getting confused?”
I created a Journey Map of how Charles would use the site in its current state. This helps stakeholders empathize with the average user’s challenges, and starts to hint at solutions to alleviate Charles’s challenges.
From the Journey Map it was clear that a consistent navigation and useful search functionality are needed on the site.
I created a Storyboard to help stakeholders envision how these kinds of positive changes can transform the average user’s experience on the site. The storyboard made it clear how that just a few changes to the site could make it far easier to navigate, and alleviate frustration experienced by confused users.
I prepared a final presentation in Keynote, outlining the process and findings of the UX study. It made clear the strengths and weaknesses of the site, and spelled out positive steps for fixing the user experience problems. I recorded the presentation in Loom, and shared it with the study participants.
When building a website’s navigation, especially if the site is going to have some complexity, it’s crucial to have consistent navigation that won’t confuse users as they move around. A few changes to the site’s design and functionality will vastly improve user experience.
In the case of the Greenville City website, two critical changes are needed: The navbar must be changed to maintain consistency across the site, and the search algorithm needs to be adapted according to what users actually want to find.
Got a user experience problem? Let's talk it through!
