Reviews

Website review: National Epilepsy Society

IT | Mrudula Kodali | 24 May 2010

Web expert Mrudula Kodali gives her thoughts on the National Epilepsy Society’s "lacklustre" website and on effective use of the ‘carousel’.

First impressions of the National Society for Epilepsy’s website are lacklustre, with the navigation lost on a white background and the overall design failing to communicate a visual hierarchy of the page elements. The initial information is also mildly confusing, as the expected introduction to the site and charity is hidden below the fold, together with a lot of other content.

The content appears not to have been written for the web, ie headings and paragraphs aren’t front-loaded – the gist of the content must appear at the beginning so that site visitors can immediately judge how relevant it is to them. The content on the ‘donate’ page, however, is good, with information on where the money goes and how to donate. However, the visual design could be more compelling.

An increasingly popular solution to highlight multiple features within limited space is the ‘carousel’. The site tries in this way to highlight four elements on each of its landing pages but the vertical tabs are easily missed. It’s paramount that best practice is followed to convey what a carousel does, to site visitors:

• Ideally, carousels automatically revolve so it’s obvious there’s more content to be explored. Each item should persist for just a few seconds to minimise the risk of site visitors clicking away from the page before the next element loads.
• Partially displaying previous and next elements by default also encourages discovery of functionality/content. 
• It’s important that users are offered the ability to pause the carousel as well as to manually move between items. 
• Finally, the aim of carousel tends to be to capture the site visitor’s attention and draw them in to certain areas of the site. Hence, it’s best to opt for a visually appealing design with minimal text.

Overall, this site is an invaluable source of information but one that would benefit from exploring interaction design further.

Score 7/10

Mrudula Kodali is a senior consultant at Webcredible

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