Usability and User Experience - News and Blog

This week sees the launch of Tesco Digital, the supermarket giant's answer to iTunes.

We've taken a look at the new site to see how it compares with Apple's all-conquering download store, which has accounted for around 70% of worldwide online digital music sales.

If you are to believe data portability proponents, one of the biggest challenges facing the internet today is the difficulty users have in sharing their data across multiple services.

We recently compared ITV's online video player to the BBC's iPlayer, finding that the ITV offering was far less usable than its rival.

ITV has since launched a new and improved version of its online TV service, so we've taken another look at it to see where the improvements have been made...

Booking and researching holidays and flights online has become more and more popular over the last few years. In 2007, the online travel market in the UK was worth £11.2 bn.

Booking a holiday online can be a complicated process, so it's important to make it as easy to use and understand for customers. Many travel websites are frustrating to use, so how does Thomas Cook fare? It's pretty good, but we have nevertheless suggested a few improvements after the jump...

Viewzi offers an alternative to the traditional text view of search results. It recently launched in beta, so we've taken a look.

As many web design firms take on the remit of upgrading a client’s website, it is important to integrate best practice SEO techniques into the web design process.

This will ensure that your client both maintains and benefits from the free rankings available in the organic listings of the major search engines.

No matter how successful an e-commerce site is, there are often ways in which a site can be improved to maintain its appeal to customers and maximise conversions.

We have looked at M&S, Amazon and Tesco already, now we take a look at Next to see what improvements could be made to their website...

Snooth is wine review site that previously covered only the US, but recently launched worldwide and now displays information from sellers in 40 countries.

There are a number of ways for etailers to handle the problem of unavailable items, from not displaying the products at all, or offering customers alternatives.

In last year's Online Retail 2007: Checkout Special report, we advised that customers should not be allowed to begin to purchase items that are out of stock, as this can frustate customers.

A new study has been critical of the quality and accessibility of UK government websites.

The report (pdf), by the Public Accounts Committee, finds that the public sector has some work to do on the usability of its websites - which it says have barely improved since 2001.