Reviews

Website review - Action for Children

IT | Clara Teoh | 1 Jun 2008

Action for Children - www.actionforchildren.org.uk

The Action for Children website does many things well – the homepage is easy to navigate and the site contains engaging, well written content. However the stand-out feature is its aesthetic design.

The graphic design of a website is not just about branding and marketing, it can also have huge impact on usability and user experience. We enjoy using things which are aesthetically pleasing and we tend to trust them more, which is important for not-for-profit organisations. There is a clever combination of positive photos and drawings on the site, demonstrating a solid understand of the charity’s audience and how to appeal to them. Action for Children’s main achievement is that it hasn’t sacrificed function for form – the website also supports users’ tasks well. Look at the search panel - it simply contains a text field and a ‘search’ button and is located in the top right corner, where users expect it to be. The search results are easy to scan and sort. And this is accomplished using a consistent and effective graphic design.

The homepage highlights users’ most frequent tasks when coming to the website – to find out about the organisation, to find out how they can help and to make a donation. These tasks are addressed through the main navigation at the top of the page and also via feature boxes in the homepage content. The site contains other engaging content for repeat users, such as a blog which encourages responses and quick polls on the homepage.

Of course there are areas for improvement – the tag line ‘as long as it takes’ doesn’t help explain to new users what the site is about. The key word ‘charity’ doesn’t appear in the homepage content at all. Some of the text on the homepage is written in capital letters, which makes it difficult for users to read. The navigation sometimes jumps from one section to another without warning, which can be confusing and leave users feeling lost.

But overall the site is highly usable and provides an excellent example of graphic design and usability in harmony.

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Directory: Action for Children
Who's Who: Clara Teoh