ITC589 Assignment 1 - Part A - Website review

The website reviewed here is that of Bunnings Warehouse. Its URL is www.bunnings.com.au.

This site is a product display site for a large retail hardware chain. Its main objective is to promote products sold by Bunnings, by allowing users to view the range of products online. Its aim is to persuade users to visit Bunnings’ stores to make purchases.

The site’s target audience is adult shoppers interested in purchasing hardware products.

Below is a screenshot of the site’s homepage.

Figure 1: Bunnings website homepage

Critique
The Bunnings website has been critiqued below using the criteria of accessibility, navigation, text design and page layout design.

Accessibility
The Bunnings site makes extensive use of images for navigation. According to the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (W3C, 2008, guideline 1.1), non-text content should have a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose.  In a number of places the Bunnings site uses labelled images for navigation, but the text label forms part of the image and is not therefore a true, usable textual alternative to the image. To fully comply with the WCAG guidelines, the site should provide usable text alternatives wherever images are used. Felke-Morris (2011, p. 212) suggests that where navigation links consist of images, site accessibility should be assisted by providing a row of text links at the foot of each page. These should be provided here. 

All functionality in the content should be operable via a keyboard (Horton, 2006, p.33). The Bunnings site complies with this requirement by enabling the user to use the Tab key to navigate through the content of each page, and activate user controls with the Enter key.

The site makes extensive use of the colours red and green. The main navigation images across the top of each page are red, and are directly adjacent to the main green banner at the top of each page. Felke-Morris (2011, p. 202) makes the point that the inability to differentiate between red and green is the most common form of colour blindness, and that these colours therefore should not be used next to each other. In this case the colour of the navigation images or the banner should be changed, or alternatively the banner should be separated from the row of navigation images, eg by a strip of white space.

While colour is used extensively to show relationships between similar elements (eg navigation elements), the site does not rely solely on colour to perform this grouping function. Other techniques, such as continuity and alignment, are also used to indicate relationships. This assists users for whom colour is not accessible. 

Navigation
Navigation is consistent throughout this large site. Navigational elements are the same size, colour, format and in the same location on each page. Summers and Summers (2005, p. 69) argue that this visual consistency is desirable, as it “increases user comfort and security, and it reduces the time required to locate and process information”. 

Some pages are much longer than one screen height (e.g. the Garden products page). Without scrolling down these pages, users are unaware of what lies below the visible part of the page. Felke-Morris (2011, p. 196) suggests that visitors can be helped to find what they need on long pages by placing a table of contents or bulleted list at the top, providing links to specific parts of the page. 

The site uses breadcrumb trails and a navigation bar employing contrasting colours for selected links to help users know where they are on the site relative to other pages. These are desirable features; as Felke-Morris notes (2011, p. 193), “[a] visitor should not feel lost in the site”. 

Another positive feature of the site is the use of dropdown sub-menus that appear when a main menu item at the top of a page is selected. Felke-Morris (2011, p. 195) argues that “[t]his type of navigation on a large complex site keeps the visitor from feeling overwhelmed by choices”.

To assist searching, both a site map and a site search facility are provided.

Text design
The site employs good contrast between text and background. In general, black, red or blue text is used on a white or pale background. This makes the text stand out and enhances readability.

Sans serif fonts are used throughout the site. Summers and Summers (2005, p. 87) suggest that sans serif typefaces are easier to read than serif typefaces. 

The site avoids the use of large blocks of text, or long paragraphs or sentences which are often regarded as difficult to read on the web (Felke-Morris, 2011, p. 210). Text is presented in short sentences and short descriptions, and makes use of bulleted points where a number of items of information need to be presented. Line lengths are also short, a strategy advocated by Summers and Summers (2005, p. 87) for making online text more legible.  

The reading level of the text on the site appears suited to its target audience, i.e. adult shoppers.

The site employs abundant blank space around text. According to Summers and Summers (2005, p. 87), this improves legibility and may attract and hold readers’ attention for longer.

Page layout design
Pages are visually consistent across the site. According to Summers and Summers (2005, p. 69), this consistency helps to maintain a desired look and feel. It also has a unifying effect. Here, consistency is seen in colours, layout, sizing, spacing and positioning of elements, particularly when applied to headings, navigation, columns, banners and content alignment. 

The site utilises the visual grouping technique of proximity noted by Summers and Summers (2005, p. 72), to make it easy for users to identify related products. All the products in a particular category (e.g. “flooring”) are grouped on the one page, and each category has its own page. This assists users to navigate to the category of product they want and, once on that page, view all the products in that category.

Conclusion
The Bunnings website is successful in providing a user-friendly, attractive online platform that achieves its objective of persuasively promoting Bunnings' products. Some improvements could be made, as suggested above.

References

Felke-Morris, T. (2011). Web Development and Design Foundations with XHTML. Boston: Pearson Education. 

Horton, S (2006). Access by design. A guide to universal usability for web designers. Berkeley, CA: Pearson Education.

Summers, K., and Summers, M. (2005). Elements of effective visual design, parts 1 and 2. Creating websites that work. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

W3C, (2008). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/