Give Choices!
design : mid
Thank you to everyone who completed the 60-second survey. I hope the pleasant surprise was to your liking. The survey is ongoing so if you haven’t already done so, you can still participate. (It’s at the bottom of the page).
The results are listed below and the main thing that strikes me is that visitors want choice. Although 43% preferred the small font size (as I would have expected), 21% preferred large, 18% medium and 18% tiny font sizes. Although many people preferred the dark font on a white background (as I would have expected), far more people preferred a light font on a dark background.
The sample is small (44) but I think the views about the 4-Ever website indicate the results are reasonable. 42% like 4-Ever, 13% do not, whilst 45% say they need to explore further. To me those figures are probably fairly accurate.
I was surprised that 21% preferred large fonts, but on reflection I think this is probably down to them having high resolution screens rather than being visually impaired. Similarly the tiny font looks good at 800 x 600 but very hard to read at anything higher. So I think that screen resolution is even more of a reason than visual difficulties to give a font-size option.
A dark font on a white background is the generally recommended colour combination for body text. The vast majority of web sites, especially business sites, conform to that rule. But in this survey the light blue on dark blue combination got an equally high score. Although the grey and black themes scored less, if you add all the light font on dark background themes together, two-thirds of respondents prefer them. That turns the experts' recommendations on their head, but of course only a small sample took the survey.
Take me as an example of differing visitor needs. I wear very strong prescription glasses and I find the grey theme to be the easiest to read. The usual 'visual disability' option of high-contrast white text on a black background is too glary for me. I also find the glare of a white background to be very tiring. I do not think I am all that unusual, especially amongst older age groups.
Conclusion
I think the survey results show clearly that giving people options is very desirable and that style-switchers should go higher on web designers' priority lists. A large-scale survey would obviously be more accurate but giving visitors choice is already simple to do and common sense would also indicate that visitors prefer more choice, so why wait for someone like Jakob Nielsen to give it the official seal of approval?
Survey Results
Preferred Style
Font-size: Tiny ---- 18% Small --------- 43% Mid ---- 18% Large ----- 21%
Color/theme: Blue ------- 34% Grey ---- 18% White ------- 31% Black ---- 17%
Expanding Images: Only 30% liked them so they no longer expand on hover on the front page.
Menu position at the bottom of page:
Like it 55% - Don't like it 30% - Other opinion 7%
Melting Icecaps:
Global warming is exaggerated 22%
Should be at top of political agenda 48%
The end is nigh. Let's party 30%
Petitions are:
Helpful 48% - Useless 27% - Other opinion 25%
Letter-writing is:
Helpful 60% - Useless 12% - Other opinion 28%
The 4-Ever Website:
Like 42% - Do not like 13% - Need to explore further 45%
Posted by Peter 15 Dec 05
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