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 Sainsburys Home Page The third part of my series on looking at supermarkets web sites to see how they use 404 pages to direct users if they get lost and so make sure that the overall user experience is a decent one.
The first two parts investigated Asda and Tesco who, between them, have almost 40 web sites. Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Morrison’s, Somerfield and the Co-Op have a lot less and so this post should be a bit shorter as a result.
I’ll just quickly mention that if you are not sure what 404 pages are and why web sites should have them (especially major UK retailers) then you can read my introduction to 404 pages here.
Of the 5 supermarkets that we are going to have a look at today, let’s start with Sainsbury’s.
Sainsbury’s
A total of 9 web sites for Sainsbury’s with a couple of smaller sites crawling out of the woodwork.
Sainsburys – www.sainsburys.co.uk
 The Sainsbury's 404 page - not a good example This is a strange one indeed, the main Sainsburys web site presents different messages or outcomes depending on the URL that you are having a problem with. For instance, if you go to http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/testing in the root of the directory structure then you are redirected back to the home page, which is not always helpful but isn’t as big a deal as if you try http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/testing, which gives you a bit ‘Not Found’ error message, completed unbranded and unhelpful for the user.
Finally, if you try going to an incorrect product page such as http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/shop/home_and_garden/cookware/testing.html, then you get a different type of server default 404 page, which is also completely unbranded, unhelpful and doesn’t present the Sainsbury’s web site in a good light.
J Sainsbury Corporate Site – www.jsainsbury.co.uk
 The corporate site leads the way with its 404 page use The corporate site offers a much better 404 page that presents the user with a search first of all and links underneath to a site index and other main pages within the web site. This is kept within the main navigation and footer and is overall a pretty good 404 page. Why can’t the main Sainsbury’s web site be similar to this?
Sainsburys Energy – www.sainsburysenergy.com
 The Sainsburys Energy 404 page is very poor...and EDF branded Sainsburys Energy is provided by EDF Energy and the 404 page is completely EDF Energy branded and totally unhelpful. The user is presented with a logo, an ‘Our Apologies’ heading and 2 reasons why you may have be shown this page, either the user mistyped or the page doesn’t exist.
There are no links to further pages or even back to the home page, no search, no sitemap, no customer service numbers or email addresses, etc. The logo does link to the Sainsburys Energy home page and users do often try clicking on a logo but this 404 page could be greatly improved.
Sainsburys Bank – www.sainsburysbank.co.uk
 Sainsbury's Bank offers a good example of a 404 page Branded as Sainsburys Finance, this 404 page is straightforward enough with the customary error message (that runs outside of the its container on the page) and then links to the home page, site map page and then links to their main product areas. Tucked away in the top left are Sainsbury’s Quick Links, which upon clicking opens a panel laid out like a sitemap page.
Sainsbury’s Business Direct – www.sainsburysbusinessdirect.co.uk
 Not any better than a server default 404 page To be frank, a horrible 404 page. This one tells you the page is not found and gives you a link back to the home page. No explanation or message plus completely unbranded, which makes it look like a server default page although I don’t think it is. This one needs a lot more effort to become a decent 404 page.
Sainsbury’s Gifts – www.sainsburysgifts.co.uk
 Sainsbury's Gifts - same terribleness as with Business Direct The Sainsbury’s Gifts web site looks pretty similar to the Business Direct site and, surprise surprise, the 404 page is similarly rubbish. Unfortunately, it is exactly the same as the poor Business Direct 404 page.
Sainsbury’s Calais – www.sainsburyscalais.co.uk
 If I can't find what I'm looking for, I won't be going to Sainsbury's in Calais A pre-order web site for getting your wine and beer sorted before you get to Calais. I noticed a couple of problems with the web site when I had a quick look around and was not surprise to find that there is no custom 404 page, just the server default kind.
Sainsbury’s Compare and Save – www.sainsburyscompareandsave.com
 Sainsbury's Compare and Save's poor attempt at a 404 page Sainsbury’s Compare and Save compares broadband, digital and phone packages and is powered by Simplify Digital. I was worried about this web site, as it doesn’t even have a title tag specified for the home page but there is a custom 404 page. However, all the 404 page consists of a large, ‘Whoops! We can’t find the page you are looking for.’ with nothing further. Whoops indeed.
If I try going to an incorrectly typed URL such as http://www.sainsburyscompareandsave.com/testing.aspx, I get a server error page, Whoops again.
Sainsbury’s Little Ones – www3.sainsburys.co.uk/littleones
 Sainsbury's Little Ones generic 404 page not good enough The Little Ones web site is a standalone web site even though its URL is on the back of the main Sainsburys domain name. The 404 page is unbranded and gives no less that 6 reasons why a user may have found it. There is a link to the Little Ones home page and I am sure that the final message of, ‘If difficulties persist, please contact the System Administrator of this site.’ is useful to somebody but not me. How would I go about doing that then?
Waitrose
Waitrose operate a total of 4 web sites that I could find without heading off into John Lewis Land.
Waitrose – www.waitrose.com
 Waitrose has an odd 404 page A slightly odd 404 page, you get a nicely short and apologetic message with a request that you use the search facility (which you have to find yourself) or the site map. The site map is underneath but this is quite a lot of white space and so if you were viewing the Waitrose site on a netbook or small laptop (such as a Macbook like I was using) then you can easily miss the fact that the sitemap is actually present just underneath where you are viewing.
Waitrose Deliver – www.waitrosedeliver.com
 Waitrose Deliver delivers hard to read 404 page The Waitrose Deliver 404 page is not great, you get a hard to read error message in light grey text on a white background, an error message with a link to the home page plus a customer services telephone number and an email address. No navigation, no link to a sitemap, no search and no footer links plus did I mention the text was a bit difficult to read?
Waitrose Wine Direct – www.waitrosewine.com
 Waitrose Wine Direct offers mature and full bodied 404 page Waitrose’s Wine web site’s 404 page requests that you try using their search in the top right hand corner of the screen, provides links to the home page and to the customer services section and asks if you type in the URL correctly. The main navigation and footer navigation is all present too, which means that the user should have a fair chance of finding what they were looking for. A good 404 page.
Waitrose Jobs – www.waitrosejobs.com
 Waitrose Jobs has a non-existent 404 page This John Lewis branded web site does not have a custom 404 page and as such delivers a nasty server default page if a user gets lost, which is of no benefit at all.
Morrisons
Just the single web site for Morrison’s so let’s hope they make a good stab of it.
Morrisons – www.morrisons.co.uk
 Morrisons 404 page - what 404 page? Oh dear, no custom 404 page on their web site, if a user stumbles across a page not found error they will hit a default server 404 page. In my view that is offering a terrible user experience.
Somerfield
Not one of the major supermarket retailers and recently merged with the Co-Operative, Somerfield have just the one web site.
Somerfield – www.somerfield.co.uk
 Somerfield's 404 page is a pretty good one A straightforward 404 page set within the site so the main header including site navigation is shown across the top and the footer is displayed underneath. The 404 message itself is fairly simplistic with links to the home page and, for some reason, to the Somerfield Corporate site, which now redirects you to the Co-Operative’s Group portion of their site, as the 2 companies have merged.
The Co-Operative
Similar to Somerfield, perhaps that is why they have just merged, the Co-Operative has a single web site.
The Co-Operative – www.co-operative.coop
 The Co-Op dishes out a decent 404 page A fairly good 404 page, tells you why you have been presented with the page and what you can do about it including links to the site map, a link to the home page and also telling you to try the search on the home page. If that wasn’t enough there is a telephone number and a customer services email address.
There aren’t many 404 pages that we’ve seen that are better than this in my view.
Conclusions
A mixed bag of supermarkets gives us changeable results in the area of 404 pages. Sainsbury’s had 2 good 404 pages (on the Corporate site and Bank web sites) but the rest were pretty poor including their main web site. Waitrose wasn’t that much better with their Wine site being the highlight whilst Morrison’s was a complete non event. Somerfield’s 404 page was straightforward and the Co-Op’s was pretty good.
Overall, a sense of disappointment (again) with the major supermarkets and how lacking their sites are when it comes to the best practice use of something as simple and basic as a 404 page. Full marks go to the Co-Operative.
 Tesco.com web site This is the second in my series of looking at supermarkets and how they use 404 pages to direct users if they get lost and so improve the overall user experience.
The supermarket that started this series off was Asda and the poor or nonexistent 404 pages that I found across a lot of their sites. You can read that post here and if you do it may help you to understand the context of this one.
If you are not sure what 404 pages are and why web sites should have them (especially major UK retailers) then you can read my introduction to 404 pages here.
So last time it was Asda and this time around we are reviewing Tesco’s web sites, the biggest UK supermarket chain.
Tesco’s Web Sites
Tesco doesn’t have as many individual web sites as Asda with around 14 in total, as opposed to Asda’s collection of 25 web sites. I have included each of Tesco’s 14 web sites in the analysis below.
No 404 Page
As with 9 of Asda’s web sites, there are a good proportion of the Tesco sites that do not have a custom 404 page. This means that when a user hits the 404 page they will just see a very unfriendly and unbranded server default 404 page, which is of practically no use to a lost user at all.
The server default 404 page was true of the following Tesco web sites:
1. Tesco Direct
 Tesco Direct 404 page Tesco Direct is a large online catalogue web site with a huge range of products. It is likely that an incorrect link or mistyped URL could result in the user hitting a 404 page, which is an unsightly Internet Information Server (IIS) server default page. Consider the Asda Direct web site from my previous analysis, which shows just how a nice custom 404 page could work for an online catalogue web site with main sections broken down into categories, almost like a site map. This gives users the ability to head to the next most relevant destination after they hit a 404 page rather than just an unfriendly default page.
2. Tesco Get Involved
 Tesco Get Involved 404 page This is Tesco’s community web site, demonstrating what Tesco is involved in, their charity work and urging us to volunteer. The web site uses the standard IIS 404 page but if you mistyped the URL so perhaps tried http://www.tescogetinvolved.com/Homes.aspx instead of http://www.tescogetinvolved.com/Home.aspx you get an ever more horrible ‘Server error in ‘/’ Application’. Sounds horrendous doesn’t it?
3. The Nutri Centre (Tesco)
 Nutri Centre 404 page The Nutri Centre have several stores within Tesco Extra’s up and down the country. Their web site, however, does not have a custom 404 page and is another odd result if you mistype a URL. For instance, if I mistype the About Us page URL and enter http://www.nutricentre.com/t-abouts.aspx instead of the correct URL of http://www.nutricentre.com/t-about.aspx, I get a page with the content area blank telling me, ‘you are here’ without any message to say what has gone wrong.
In my experience users do try to input URLs directly and can often mistype them. If a page URL is entered that is not recognised then a nice 404 page should appear and not a result that is obviously not intended. If you mistype a URL whilst on a product page then you do get a message telling you that the product could not be found.
The one I find the most surprising from the above list is Tesco Direct, which is a huge web site and could really make use of a decent 404 page to direct users to all the different sections that make up the Tesco Direct site or to complete a search if they cannot find a particular product that they are looking for.
Mixed Results
These next 2 Tesco web site offer some mixed results in that there is a custom 404 page in there somewhere but it is mixed up with server default 404 pages and some other weirdness depending on what you stumble across.
1. Tesco Entertainment
 Tesco Entertainment 404 page The Tesco Entertainment web site has recently been relaunch and sports a nice new design. Previously, the web site just had a server default 404 error page and so would have appeared in the first section of this post. However, the new web site has a custom 404 page, wahey!
Hold on, don’t get too excited as there is a bit of weirdness ahead. There is a custom 404 page in the Home section that tells me that something is wrong if I try to go to a URL such as http://www.tescoentertainment.com/store/browse/home/testing/. It is not a great example but we’ll take it at this stage.
If you go back to the root of the site and try http://www.tescoentertainment.com/testing/, you get a horrible server default page again. Why doesn’t the correct 404 page display here?
2. Tesco Photo
 Tesco Photo 404 page Tesco Photo is Tesco’s photo processing web site and looks like the older style Tesco web site. There are certainly a couple of odd things that I would hope they could eradicate if Tesco pushed a new photo site live.
The start page is http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/welcome.jsp so if we amend that to http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/testing we get a nasty server default 404 page. Going to the root (http://www.tescophoto.com/testing) as we did with Tesco Entertainment also produces the same server default 404 page, good consistency so far but bad 404 page.
Let’s just start this next bit by stating that all URLs as far as I could tell by a quick browse ended with an extension of .jsp. If I pretend to mistype a URL such as http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/view_tour2.jsp instead of http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/view_tour.jsp I do get a custom 404 page (again, why can’t this 404 page display for the entire site?) with a message that tells me to make sure that the URL has the correct extension and goes on to say that all URLs have the extension .html and not .htm.
Not so I’m afraid, as the site uses .jsp and not .html or .htm. Even if I amend my original URL to http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/view_tour.html or http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/view_tour2.html I am returned to the server default 404 page and lose the slightly nicer custom 404 page.
I know that this is just a case of the Tesco Photo site updating its error messages but I think it does highlight the importance of what you are telling lost users to do. In this case, a user would get so confused by this message and I don’t think it would make any sense to them at all.
So that is 5 web sites out of a total of 14 that either do not have a custom 404 page at all or have mixed results. This equates to 36% of Tesco’’s web sites, which is exactly the same as Asda’s 36% of web sites not having a custom 404 page.
Custom 404 Pages
Right, we are now onto the the next 9 of Tesco’s web sites, which all have custom 404 pages in place. Let’s see how good they are.
1. Tesco
 Tesco 404 page The 404 page on the main Tesco web site is a very basic 404 page but it does say sorry, explains what may have happened and gives you a link to the home page plus a customer service number and another link to an online enquiry form.
The enquiry form link is a bit odd because it takes you to a page with lots of phone numbers and postal addresses but no online enquiry form that I could fine. At the least the home page link does take you to the Tesco home page.
I think that Tesco are missing an opportunity to better direct their site visitors that may be getting lost and perhaps a link to their sitemap page here http://www.tesco.com/shopping/ would be more useful.
2. Tesco Finance
 Tesco Finance 404 page Offers an abrupt, ‘The page you are trying to reach does not exist.’ message and a link back to the Tesco Finance home page. Not the most polite of 404 pages but the main navigation is present, footer links plus a ‘Got a question’ link that opens an FAQ in a new window. Overall it is better than a lot of Tesco’s web sites but could be nicer to people who are a bit lost.
3. Tesco Compare
 Tesco Compare 404 page A reasonable stab at a 404 page with a short message and a link to the site map. Links to the main sections of the web site are presented below the message plus the main navigation and footer is retained so a lost user should be able to find roughly where they need to go.
4. Tesco Insulation
 Tesco Insulation 404 page Tesco also sell insulation for the home and the site does have a custom 404 page but in all honesty it is not much better than a server default page. The page is not branded as Tesco but rather as a company called Creo, which I believe must be their hosting provider. The 404 page itself is also not especially helpful in that it has no links back to the home page, or to a sitemap, or to complete a search, and so offers no assistance to help the user in where they might want to go next.
5. Tesco plc
 Tesco plc 404 page The Tesco plc web site is Tesco’s corporate home, covering their corporate responsibility, investor information and media details. The 404 page for such an important web site is straightforward and contains the details that you would expect including a standard error message with a link back to the home page. The site displays this set within the site navigation so that a user can still navigation to any section, to the sitemap or complete a search.
Overall, this 404 page is absolutely fine.
6. Tesco Diets
 Tesco Diets 404 page The Tesco Diets web site is concerned with online dieting, weight loss and healthy eating. It has a 404 page but this is branded as eDiets and not Tesco Diets. The text on this 404 page is about eDiets including links to the eDiets home page, eDiets news page and an eDiets email address. Clicking on the link to the eDiets home page actually takes the user back to the Tesco Diets home page. Is that confusing for a user do you think? I think so too.
7. Tesco Opticians
 Tesco Opticians 404 page The Tesco Opticians web site uses the same layout for their 404 page as the main Tesco web site. So there is some consistency at least between the two web sites, which is a good thing. Other than that the comments are the same in that the 404 page is very basic, it does say sorry, explains what may have happened and gives you a link to the Tesco Opticians home page plus a customer service number. In this case there is no link to an enquiry form.
8. Tesco Energy
 Tesco Energy 404 page Tesco Energy explains iteself as being an energy price comparison and carbon offsetting service. The 404 page displays a logo for Xelector (who much provide the price comparison engine that this web site is based on) and so is not Tesco branded. Furthermore, the 404 page is very basic, it consists of a short message and an email address to contact if you think you have stumbled across an error. However, the email address isn’t Tesco’s either, it is webmaster@xelector.com.
As a user of the Tesco Energy site, I would expect that if I get lost and find myself on the 404 page then I would see a Tesco Energy 404 page with Tesco Energy contact details and/or links back to the Tesco Energy web site. I don’t expect to be presented with whoever Xelector are and what they have to do with Tesco Energy.
In my view, this 404 page does not really help the user at all so there is little point in having it.
9. Tesco Travel Store
 Tesco Travel Store 404 page The Tesco Travel Store presents another 404 page with no Tesco branding and not much help. The error message tells you to click back or close down your browser (and when I open it again will I go back to the Tesco Travel Store? Not likely) or ‘click here to go back’. The click here link does not work.
I notice that the 404 page has a Lastminute.com favicon and this is consistent with the Tesco Travel Store being powered by Lastminute.com. I would expect a much better 404 page to be honest, as the Lastminute.com web site has quite a good 404 page.
Conclusions
So that concludes my roundup of Tesco’s 14 web sites and their use (or lack of use) of custom 404 pages. Overall, I am really disappointed that such a major UK retailer seems to be struggling with basic good practice in the proper use of 404 pages and the benefits that they offer to users of their web sites.
Considering the 14 web sites, I found 3 sites to have no 404 page, 2 to have a kind of strange halfway house approach to 404 pages and 9 to offer a semblance of a 404 page but Tesco Insulation, Tesco Diets, Tesco Energy and Tesco Travel Store were all awful examples.
From the remaining 5 web sites Tesco.com and Tesco Opticians had OK 404 pages and Tesco Finance, Tesco Compare and Tesco plc were all quite good. So from the original 14 web sites, only 3 were found to have quite good 404 pages but even those could be better in my view.
Next up we’ll have a look at Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Morrison’s.
I have been meaning to carry out some quality checks on well known and popular web sites for a while but I wasn’t quite prepared for just how easy this exercise would turn out to be, especially when looking at the use of custom 404 pages.
Practically one of the first web sites I had a look at was Asda, don’t ask me why – my thought process went retail -> supermarkets -> Asda -> Bingo!
Custom 404 Pages
Just to recap on what custom 404 pages are before I launch into the detail, I wrote an article back in August on why sites should have custom 404 pages. I put forward points that the 404 page should contain a helpful message, links back to the home page or to a sitemap, be designed within the web site’s own styling so you know you are on the correct site and above all, be helpful to the user so they can find their way if they are lost.
Having a well thought out custom 404 page shows that the company behind the web site has considered the user and what happens if they stumble across a broken or incorrect link. The user doesn’t want to hit a page not found error but, if they do, a good 404 page is well worth a bit of extra effort in my view.
Imagine then when one of the first web sites that I checked did not have a good 404 page. In fact, I was sent to a nasty server default 404 page, no nice message, no helpful links, no site branding or styling, nothing. That web site was www.asda.co.uk and, for those who aren’t aware, they are a major UK supermarket and owned by Wal-Mart.
Asda
Once I had recovered my composure, I started to look through the rest of Asda’s web sites (they have quite a few) to see whether any of them had what I would call a proper 404 page instead of one that just exclaims:
Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.
Continue reading Asda demonstrates poor use of custom 404 pages, presents disparate set of web sites
I was shown a great feature yesterday by a web developer on how a web site can accommodate smaller screen resolutions such as those used on mobile devices – smartphones, iPhones, netbooks, smartbooks and the like.
W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium) web site at www.w3.org shows us a really simple trick of checking the browser window size and then loading in a different stylesheet based on that window size. You can try this and see the stylesheet change before your very eyes. Go to www.w3.org and start making your browser window much smaller. Once you get to 480 pixels wide the stylesheet changes to a layout much more suited to your window size giving you a readable page that would otherwise be difficult to view at that size because of menus and other graphics getting in the way of the content.
This is a very neat way of coping with mobile web browsers on smaller screens and resolutions and in my view it works well.
Have you seen any similar methods of switching stylesheets? Would you implement something like this on your web site?
 Sydney Opera House - took nearly as long to finish as Opera 10 The Opera 10 web browser was released as a final version on September 1st after being in beta for a fair few months. It was set to revolutionise web browsing when it was first announced but are your web sites compatible with Opera 10 and is it worth worrying about?
So now that Opera 10 is out of beta and launched on an unsuspecting public, I decided to install the newly released web browser and put it through its paces with a few web sites to see how they display and to make sure they work correctly.
From checking over several web sites that I am familiar with and had a hand in project managing and testing when they were launched, including a couple of decent sized gaming web sites, I can safely say that Opera 10 does a pretty good job of displaying those sites as they were intended. I could only find one or two very minor layout issues from the brief checking that I completed although overall I still preferred using Firefox for browsing, as Opera 10 did not load in the pages fully on some occasions. This could be my Internet connection but I was using Firefox to load in exactly the same page just a second or 2 after Opera so I believe it is more likely to be Opera.
Presto 2.2 Rendering Engine
Opera 10 uses the company’s own Presto 2.2 rendering engine to produce pages and display them on screen and so separate browser compatibility testing just for Opera should be considered just in case Opera decides to display an element or part of a layout in a different way to other browsers.
As I mentioned above, from the checks that I have completed today I am not massively worried about going through all of the sites I have worked on to ensure that they display and work correctly (although that is always a good idea if you have the time) but should Opera 10 be added to the standard list of major web browsers that I test web sites with?
Opera 10 Usage
From reviewing the browser usage statistics at w3schools.com, Opera shows as being used by 2.1% of Internet users. Deliving into this a bit deeper we can see that 2.0% are currently using Opera 9.5 and so could be expected to upgrade to Opera 10 in the near future.
So the usage figures are very low, even taking into account Opera 9.5 users that will probably upgrade at some point. And there are some features worth upgrading for in terms of Opera Turbo, which compresses pages to speed up browsing when on slower connections, revised tabs area and an improved Speed Dial page.
Opera For Mobile Users
What we should also remember is that Opera is used as the main web browser for many smartphones, PDAs and other mobile devices, including netbooks. The advent of Opera Turbo, which has also found its way into the company’s mobile version means that devices that connect to the Internet on 3G or similar connections will often use Opera as their preferred browser.
If your web site is going to be frequented by mobile users then I would strongly recommend that you make sure you test thoroughly in Opera 10 and its mobile equivalent version (version 9.7 is currently in beta). For those looking for all round browser compatibility then some testing in Opera 10 would certainly be recommended but, as is often the case, if you are seriously stuck for time in your testing plan then Opera will probably be the first of the ‘major’ browsers that you can safely not worry too much about. There will undoubtedly be more issues to discover in the IE’s (6, 7 and eight) and I would continue to concentrate on those browsers along with Firefox and Safari/Chrome.
Browser Compatibility Tools
For those of you wishing to test in Opera 10 then you can download the browser for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux here and run it alongside other browsers that you may have installed. So it is easy to flick between Opera and Firefox or IE8 when checking individual web pages over.
In terms of the browser compatibility testing tools that are out there and shown on our testing tools page, the following are showing as supporting Opera 10.
Further Reading For Opera 10
Photo credit -: pranav :-
 Should we stop supporting IE6? Internet Explorer 6 has long been the bane of web developers and web testers lives. Is it time to stop supporting IE6 users and pouring time and effort into this antiquated browser or should we, as decent web professionals, keep these users in the web ways they are accustomed to.
The most common problems that web designers and developers face with IE6 are CSS styling and layout bugs where the fixes required are often reached after several hours of trial and error. The IE6 PNG fix has gained prominence as being one of the more famous bug fixes around. More experienced developers will be able to implement these fixes more quickly but there can still be considerable effort needed to iron out these frustrating bugs.
When working on the development of a web site I find that there is always an aspect to the project that is related to IE6 testing and bug fixing, either the site in development is regularly checked as the build progresses or there is a big effort at the end to fully test the completed web site for IE6 oddities.
So is this additional effort warranted for one browser or is the IE6 issue hyped and not really that much of a problem at all, just something that we are all capable of dealing with just like any other browser?
Well, there are a lot of people who think that we should stop supporting IE6 altogether. A few of the more well known campaigns are Stop IE6 and Save The Developers who believe that users should boycott IE6 and move to newer and better web browsers.
This has caused a lot of debate amongst web developers for the best part of 18 months or longer. Whilst the numbers of IE6 users do appear to be finally coming down – July 2009 shows IE6 accounts for 14.4% of browser market share, down from 32% in January 2008, according to w3schools.com, which means there is still a significant number of them.
And that’s the problem, IE6 is, like it or not, still a major browser, even after all these years. It is in fact still the third most popular browser after Firefox 3 and IE7. Internet Explorer 6 was released in August 2001 and so has been around for exactly 8 years. In fact, IE6’s eighth anniversary was on August 27th, as Wikipedia has told me today.
So why are there so many people still using IE6 as their web browser?
Is the continued use of IE6 because that is the browser that was pre-installed when the computer was originally purchased and the user has never upgraded? Is it that simple?
It seems completely reasonable that there are thousands, if not millions of Internet users that purchased a computer for home use back when IE6 was practically the only web browser around (or more to the point was already installed on the computer they bought) and have continued to use it to surf the web completely oblivious to the need to upgrade. They simply have no motivation or desire or perhaps even the understanding required to upgrade their web browser. These users could easily still be running Word 97 and playing solitaire on a 15 inch CRT monitor with a resolution of 800 x 600 for all I know.
That may be unfair but in general terms we need to test most web sites for the lowest common denominator and, for the moment, that still includes IE6.
Despite all the campaigns trying to get users to upgrade their browsers or persuading developers to stop supporting IE6 when building web sites IE6 may only finally drop to a minor browser level after everybody has upgraded their computers rather than just their browsers.
So perhaps the campaigns should be about getting users to buy a new computer rather than using the old PC that they purchased 5 or 6 years ago.
But until the number of IE6 users drops to levels that are not as concerning do we continue to develop web sites and web applications with IE6 in mind, spending considerable resources in the process and huge amounts of frustration when it comes to testing and putting fixes in place when other browsers display the web sites we build pretty much as intended.
Or do we simply check for the browser version that they are using and, if it is IE6, display a message telling them they their browser is not supported, they cannot enter the web site and provide them with a link to our favourite alternative?
I have seen several web sites do something like this or sometimes they let the IE6 user have access to the web site with the proviso that there may be problems lying in wait.
The latter option is not a solution in my mind, akin to a doorman saying ’sorry mate, you’re not coming in’ when you try to walk into a shop. Perhaps the statistics for your own web site show IE6 users as being a lot less than 14.4% at present and your decision is to stop supporting them. Well, that of course is up to you but I think I will be continuing to test all web sites in IE6 for the foreseeable future, until such time as new computers are purchased or users finally see sense and upgrade to a more modern browser.
What do you think about continuing to support IE6? I would be interested to hear your views.
Photo courtesy of Flickr and z6p6tist6.
 Loop11 - User Experience Tool Web-based usability testing tools are starting to become more prevalent these days with the likes of Clixpy, Loop11 and UserTesting all appearing recently.
We shall have a look at Loop11 first of all, which has been in private beta for around 4 months now but is soon to be released to the general public.
According to their web site – Loop11 is a web-based user-experience testing tool, allowing companies to conduct online, unmoderated user testing on any kind of digital interface. Loop11 is not a survey or web analytics tool, but a user experience tool… helping you to understand user behaviour.
Sounds good so far, so how do you get started?
First of all, once you log in, click on the big ‘Create New User Test’ button in bright orange so you can’t miss it. You will be presented with a form with the following fields:
Public Title – this will be seen by your test participants
Working Title – used to identify your test for you only
Copy User Test From – so you can duplicate an existing test or just start with a blank one.
 Loop11 - Create User Test Once you have filled those fields in you enter into a 5 step process to complete the creation of your user test.
Step 1 – User Test Details
This includes the ability to set your language and Loop11 supports over 40 languages.
Step 2 – Tasks & Questions
You have the ability to add tasks or questions to your user test and Loop11 provides some help if you are unsure what to do in this respect. A task would be something that you would like the user to perform such as find a particular piece of information on your web site and to add one you give it a name, a scenario that tells the user what it is you want them to do, the start URL where they commence the task and the success URL, which the user has to navigate to in order to complete the task.
I created a task to ask the user to find step 6 from the article ‘How To Test Web Forms in 7 Steps’. When the user is carrying out this task they can either abandon the task if they could not accomplish it or mark it as complete.
To add a question, you choose the question type from a list including multiple choice, rating scale and open ended. So you could ask ‘How Usable In This Web Site?’ and ask the user to rate on a scale from 1 to 10 or using words such as Poor, Average, Good, Excellent.
I entered the question, ‘How easy is it to use the search facility on this web site?’ and gave the possible answers as being Poor, Fair, Good and Excellent (I copied them from Loop11’s help text) plus I made the question mandatory.
If you want the user to type in an answer such as correctly answering how much one of your services costs then choose one of the open ended questions.
Each time you had a task or a question you are presented with the Step 2 – Task & Questions screen helpfully showing all the items you have added with the ability to either edit, delete, duplicate, preview or move them up or down in the list. Once you are happy with what you have set you click ’save and continue’ to move onto step 3.
 Loop11 - Tasks & Questions confirmation Step 3 – User Test Options
This is where you set the number of participants that you would like to complete the user test, from 1 to 999 and specify the thank you text the user sees on completion of the site. There are some other useful settings here such as being able to block or allow specific IP addresses.
Step 4 – Invite Participants
So now you get to invite the lucky participants to take part in your user test. Here you have 3 options:
i) Create a link to your user test – Loop11 generates a link for you that you can distribute any way you like.
ii) Create a popup invitation that can reside on your own web site – Loop11 gives you the code for a popup window to be placed on your web site.
iii) Purchase participants – Loop11 gives you the names of 6 companies that you can potentially purchase participants from with a link to direct users to your user test. This seems to essentially be the same as choosing item 1 although you get the details of 6 companies that you can buy users from.
Step 5 – Launch
Once you have sorted out how you are going to invite your participants you end up on the final step, to launch your user test. This gives you a summary of what you have selected and allows you to preview your test before you launch it. You should be careful because once you have launched your test you are not able to go back and edit it unfortunately.
If, like me, you realise that the questions you have set make little sense to someone seeing your web site for the first time then you should go back and edit them now before you finalise your user test.
Preview – when I clicked on the Preview button when still on step 1 I got a message telling me there was an internal server error and that someone had been notified of it. Once I moved onto step 2 the Preview button did seem to work fine and showed me the first couple of pages that a user will see when participating in the web site evaluation.
One of the tasks I had prepared was for a visitor to submit an enquiry form because I wanted to test that visitors could use the enquiry form including field validation. When previewing the test, I submitted an enquiry but my enquiry form kept telling me that I had not input the validation code that I have to prevent automated software from filling it in (even though I had input the code). This is possibly due to Loop11 conflicting with the validation method of my enquiry form so I removed that task from my test. I will raise this separately with Loop11 because many tests could require this type of input and so the preview does need to be able to handle that aspect.
Launch – once you click on Launch you will be presented with a summary page showing the details of your test plus the URL that will link to the test that you can distribute. If you elected to choose that you wanted the invitation for the test to appear in a popup window then the details of the JavaScript that you need to add to your web site will be given to you.
 Loop11 - Launch screen My Projects
Once you have launched your test you can view the results from within the My Projects tab. For each project you can see the date it was launched, how many responses received, its current status and then you can view the design of the project (what tasks, questions and other settings you selected when creating the project) and its report.
View Report
Once your test starts gaining participants you can view your report, which gives you access to the following screens:
Dashboard – first of all this shows the average task completion rate for your test presented as a pie chart. As I only had one task I can see that the average completion rate was about two thirds whilst one third abandoned the task. Underneath is presented the task results overview which shows the average page views and average time taken to reach a resolution for each task. You also get a bar chart showing the task completion rate for each task.
You are able to export the results of the report at any time in either CSV, Excel XML or PDF formats, which I think is pretty useful for any presentations that you are putting together and/or any followup actions required as a result of this testing.
 Loop11 - Dashboard screen Tasks – this page shows more detail for each task including the completion rate taken from the dashboard but also further aspects such as page views to complete task, time to complete task, most common success page, most common abandon page, most common first click and most common navigation path.
There is also a function called Participant path analysis, which allows you to go through each participant and what they clicked on when completing the task.
These reports give you invaluable information for how users approach each task that you have set them, what they click on first (possibly giving you the most eye opening results), how long it takes them to complete the task and more.
Questions – this report goes through each of the questions that you posed for your users and the results or answers that they gave. For the question in my test, ‘How easy is it to use the search facility on this web site?’, two thirds of respondents felt it was good and one third said it was excellent. However, for my open ended second question, ‘How much does the monthly link check service cost?’ I got a variety of answers where I think respondents did not really understand the question I was asking.
Not only are you testing how users experience your web site, you are also testing your ability to set good tasks and questions that your users will understand.
Participants – the participants section gives you detailed information on each person completing the test including the time they spent on the test, average time taken per task, average page views per task, their IP address, their user agent or browser and the date they completed the test.
 Loop11 - Participants screen Overall I think the results that you get are pretty comprehensive and will allow some very worthwhile followup actions to be completed to improve the user experience of your web site.
The pricing of Loop11 has still to be announced and, if the pricing is not too steep and indications that I have received from Loop11 are that it will be a reasonable price per test, my belief is that you will get a lot of great feedback that will easily pay for the cost of the test as long as you think carefully about the tasks and questions that you set for any participants.
Update (26th August) – I have been informed that pricing for Loop11 will be set at $350 USD per project, which includes unlimited tasks and questions and up to 1,000 participants. This pricing will be in place once the private beta concludes on 1st September.
Loop11 - User Experience Tool I am carrying out a review of Loop11, a new web-based user experience testing tool and would be very grateful for your input.
Loop 11 allows you to conduct online, unmoderated user testing on your web site. It is not a survey or web analytics tool, but a user experience tool and is aimed at helping you to understand user behaviour.
There are several of these types of tools being released and Loop11 is currently in private beta although is due to be released to the general public soon.
I would be extremely grateful if you could complete a short, 3 step test for me so that I can collect some results and finish my review of the Loop11 user experience tool.
In order to carry out this short test, please click on the link below:
http://www.loop11.com/usability-test/1330/introduction/
Thank you for taking part and please look out for our full review of this usability (or user experience) testing software coming soon by signing up to our RSS feed or following us on Twitter.
 LinkAlarm - Link Checking software LinkAlarm is a web-based link checking application that has been around for over 10 years and scans your web site checking each and every link on each web page. You can have LinkAlarm check your links once a week, once a month or you can run the scan manually whenever you like.
So the principle of LinkAlarm is straightforward enough, let’s see how it performs.
Signing Up
You can register for a free account, which is a 14 day trial that gives you enough credit (more on credit later) to check links on up to 100 pages.
Registering is easy enough, a few details about you (your name, email address and how you found LinkAlarm) and your web site (the URL, how often you would like to check – once only, weekly, every 2 weeks or monthly and the category of your web site).
Once you have registered you are presented with a screen with a welcome message, your site details and a further message saying that your site will be checked in 5 minutes and notification of the report will be emailed once finished.
 LinkAlarm - Welcome Message I waited 5 minutes and nothing happened, no email. So I went back to the screen and read it again. It appears I had ignored some text that said ‘Please continue by confirming the entry of your site’ but there was no confirm site button and I had got confused. I clicked on the ‘Site Control’ link so see what that did and was presented with a page where it said ‘Checking’ in flashing green text. Good enough for me, I’ll leave it a little while and see what happens.
 LinkAlarm - Checking Site So, whilst that is running let me explain how the pricing structure of LinkAlarm works.
You pay for credits to be added to your account and then every time you run a report (either manually or automatically) LinkAlarm deducts 1 cent for each page of your web site. So if you have a 20 page web site you will pay 20 cents every time a report runs.
In my book that is pretty good value but is obviously more expensive for larger web sites and how often you want LinkAlarm to scan your site.
About half an hour later I received an email from LinkAlarm with the results and links to access more detailed reports online.
The Results
Within the email that LinkAlarm sends to you there is a section displaying your overall link check results. So my Testing Web Sites blog has 18 pages (still pretty small but growing) with a score of 64 and a failure of 3.7% (oh dear, really?). I had spotted that the category average for my web site is 2.5% so a failure percentage of 3.7% is a bit embarrassing and worrying. Let’s have a look at that in some more detail.
The email also gives you a number of statements (I won’t list them all here), which give you a quick impression of how well your web site performs in terms of internal links, external links and an overall score.
So, here are a couple of statements from the scan completed for www.testing-web-sites.co.uk, the comments are my comments relating to each statement:
Of the 18 pages checked, 18 (or 100%) were found to have one or more alarms.
Comment – so there is something broken on every page of my web site, great.
LinkAlarm checked 53 internal links and found 1 (or 2%) need attention.
Internal links are URLs that point to files inside your site.
Comment – there is 1 link that has a problem and it is probably on multiple pages, which is why I am getting such a high failure percentage.
LinkAlarm also checked 29 external links and found 2 (or 7%) need attention.
External links are URLs that point to files outside your site.
Comment – again, just 2 links that need attention but a high percentage because of the relatively low number of external links I have in place at present.
The LinkAlarm Score for this site (64) is an average of the page and alarm
ratios above. A score of 100 indicates all links checked reported no alarms.
Comment – I am guessing at the moment that a score of 64 is not great.
The link failure rate for this site (3.7%) is worse than
the benchmark link failure rate of 2.5% for the category – Computers & Internet.
Comment – I had spotted that too so will look into those failing links now to see what is wrong.
What the email from LinkAlarm also gives you is an understanding of what it would cost to run this report regularly on your web site plus links to their order form to order some credits. The costs are based on the number of pages and how often the report is run, for example, once each week. As I explained above the costs are based on 1 cent per page so if my web site stays at 18 pages then it would cost 18 cents to run each report or just under $10 each week for a year, not exactly big bucks.
It is helpful to know how much it is likely to cost to keep LinkAlarm checking my site but the only problem I have with this costing model is that I am aiming to grow my web site a lot over the next few months and so my costs to run LinkAlarm will continue to grow as the number of pages in my site increases.
So let’s have a look at the report now.
The Report
 A screenshot of the LinkAlarm report summary As mentioned in the email, the report gives you a summary first and the average for your category.
Then comes an Alarm Summary that shows the type of link failure for internal links, external links and total links. As you can see one of my internal links has a 405 error, which is Method Not Allowed. If you don’t know what this is then there is some handy help text available to give you an explanation.
405 Method Not Allowed means:
Common Alarm. Most commonly seen in ACTION links on FORMs where the server has not been configured to allow POST operations.
What you can do: Enable the ACTION for the correct location in your server configuration.
Clicking on the number of links shows me the pages that LinkAlarm found with the Method Not Allowed issue. This problem is being picked up on a PHP script relating to the posting of comments and is found on 7 of my 18 pages. At first glance this looks like an issue to do with my Wordpress blog or perhaps the theme that I am using, which will need further investigation and is unfortunately outside the scope of this review.
Now let’s have a look at the external links, the 2 errors are showing as 403 Forbidden. Again, some help text gives us a description of what that type of error is.
403 Forbidden means:
Common Alarm. The server will not provide the requested file. Commonly seen where content from an intranet has been made publicy available on the public internet or when your link points to a directory on a server and that server is configured to not provide directory listsings.
What you can do: Remove protection or provide and index file in the directory if necessary.
Both issues relate to links in the footer of each page of my blog, linking to the theme’s author. Clicking on those links manually does not result in a 403 Forbidden message but obviously LinkAlarm was getting that response.
So how does this happen? My view is that my theme’s author’s web site has some checking in place that works out if an automated bot is trying to access its pages and maybe responds with a different response code (403 in this case) than if my browser were trying to access the page.
This gives me a bit of a problem in trying to tidy up my LinkAlarm report because the software is going to think there are issues every time the report runs whereas in actual fact there does not appear to be any issues with the quality of my external links. This problem then is also not going to be restricted to just LinkAlarm but will extend to other link checking software too.
LinkAlarm, however, allows you to ignore certain pages or URLs and so you can maintain a list of any links such as the ones above. After ignoring the 2 external links that were producing incorrect 403 errors I ran the report again. This time I got a much more satisfactory result of 1.3% failure rate and an overall score of 86. There is now just that 1 internal link to investigate and deal with.
Other Features
It is worth detailing some of the other main features that you get as part of your LinkAlarm account, as follows:
History – shows you the history of the reports run with a graphic and summary information. Useful to see the improvement or worsening of your link check reports over time.
Download – you can download reports as zip files so you can keep copies of reports for later use.
Ignore URLS – as mentioned above.
Checking Limits – you can limit the number of pages that LinkAlarm checks if you want to. May be useful for larger sites that could stretch into hundreds or even thousands of pages.
Password Access – LinkAlarm can check password protected sites so useful for Intranets or web sites still in development.
Sites – the ability to add multiple sites to LinkAlarm so you can have it regularly checking all of your web sites using the same overall account. A good feature for agencies or larger companies who maintain a number of web sites.
 LinkAlarm screenshot showing sites feature Conclusion
Regularly link checking is a good thing and means that you are able to pick up on any link quality or linkrot problems at an early stage. Just the report run today on Testing Web Sites has raised some interesting items.
There is, however, only so much that any automated link checking software can do and this highlights the point about manually checking each and every link when you first complete an update to your web site or add a new page or blog post.
LinkAlarm is easy to set up and its free account enables you to start checking links very quickly. The ongoing costs are not great for smaller web sites but I wonder how LinkAlarm would perform for large, dynamic web sites such as an ecommerce site where they are potentially thousands of individual pages (although you can limit the number of pages or check specific pages if you want to).
The additional features that you get mean that LinkAlarm is worth considering for a wide variety of different companies and I will be continuing to use it unless I can find a better alternative.
Overall, I would recommend LinkAlarm for static web sites and possibly some further testing would be needed for larger and database driven web sites.
 Browser Compatibility Testing using Browsershots There are many different tools out there that can make life easier when it comes to all forms of testing web sites from HTML and CSS validation services to browser compatibility testing, link checking and stress or load testing.
We have started a collection of web testing tools, web-based and software applications that will point you in the right direction in order to make the testing of web sites that little bit more straightforward.
Recent additions to the list include a couple of web-based usability testing tools called Loop11 and UserTesting that both aim to take some of the hassle out of usability testing and gaining the views and opinions of real users actually using your web site. Look out for reviews of both of these online tools coming soon.
We will continue to keep you informed as the testing tools list expands and more excellent tools are added plus any reviews or impressions as they become available.
If you have a testing tool or software application used for testing web sites that you would like to add to the list then please contact us to let us know and we will add it as soon as we can.
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