GUEST POSTING M&C Saatchi top ad agency site for usability, Leo worst

Last month, Mumbrella revealed that many of Australia’s agencies are poor at making themselves findable via online search. Now, in a guest posting, James Breeze from Objective Digital, scores the usability of the websites of ten of Australia’s biggest ad agencies.  

Most of Australia’s top advertising agencies have websites that scored very unevenly on usability criteria. Usability is sacrificed for bells and whistles, and the sites take ages to load.  Some didn’t even work at all! Admittedly, the primary purpose of the websites is to showcase creativity and list awards, not to provide quick access to info such as contact details, or lists of services. But on most of the agencies’ sites, it is the showcase of work that keeps you waiting.

 We gave the websites of the top ten advertising agencies a workout by looking for the services provided, and used eye-tracking to capture the results.  Eye tracking is a great way to demonstrate how someone uses a site as you can clearly see exactly where as person is looking on the webpage. What we look for is a gaze path that is ordered and shows that people can instantly see what to do.

We reviewed the sites against criteria based on usability heuristics, and grouped them into Orientation, Exploration, and Accessibility. We usually cover SEO criteria in our MarketPlace category but this has already been covered elsewhere by Mumbrella.