Only 20% of the most popular websites in India are ‘user-friendly'
A recent ‘usability' study of 121 most popular websites in India undertaken by the online research firm, JuxtConsult found that only 26 (or 1 out of 5) of these top websites really qualify to be called ‘user-friendly'.
Of the 26 highly user-friendly websites identified, 12 websites stood out to form the benchmark or ‘Best Practice' group scoring in the 95% percentile plus range, while 14 websites qualified to form the ‘User-Friendly' group scoring in the 85% to 95% percentile range.
Of the remaining 95 websites tested, 45 websites (37%) performed only averagely, qualifying to be in the ‘Just About Satisfactory' group, and 50 websites (42%) performed below-average to form the ‘Need Definite Improvement' group.
Best Practice Websites
(Above 95 th Percentile) |
Just Meet Expectations Websites
(85 th -50 th Percentile) |
Shopping
Shaadi
Yatra
HSBC
Jobstreet
Ebay
Spicejet
Travelguru
SimplyMarry
Citibank
Reliance
Samsung |
Monster
Jobsahead
Indiatimes shopping
Air Deccan
Jet Airways
Kingfisher
Date
Hi5
Airtel
Nokia
99acres
Indiaproperties
Jaaydaad
Hotmail
Clickjobs |
Froogle
Makemytrip
Typepad
Sharekhan
ESPNStar
Cricinfo
Tensoprts
Music
Miniclip
Motafish
Idea
Altavista
Yahoo email
Gmail
Air Sahara |
Cleartrip
Orkut
Linkedin
Blogger
Myspace
Jeevansaathi
Aajtak
BBC
WWE
Raaga
Zapak
Chotafish
Google
Live
NCW |
User Friendly Websites
(95 th –85 th Percentile) |
Need Definite Improvement Websites
(Below 50 th Percentile) |
Naukri
Amazon
Bharatmatrimony
ICICI Bank
HDFC
NSE
Timesjobs
Rediff shopping
SBI
Indiabulls
BSE
Hutch
Sony Ericcson
Magicbricks |
Ryze
Facebook
NDTV
Times of India
Santabanta
MTV
Games
Motorola
Wikipedia
CVC
TRAI
Yahoo portal
Sify portal
Fropper
Wordpress
Youtube
Moneycontrol |
ICICI Direct
Indiafm
MP3
Cooltoad
Download
IRCTC
Yahoo 360
Yahoo Games
Raftaar
MSN portal
Cricketnext
Sports
Cinema
Musicindiaonline
Rediff portal
Indiatimes portal
CIC |
MTNL
CBI
Health ministry
Bollywood
NHRC
Rural ministry
Rediff email
Quillpad
Webduniya
Indiatimes email
Hindi
Home Affairs ministry
Sify email
UPSC
Law ministry
HRD ministry |
Note – The websites are listed in the order of their ranking in columns
Interestingly, as the majority of these 26 highly user-friendly websites come from the world of e-commerce, one can observe that websites which depend more on generating their revenues directly from their user tend to care more for the user's convenience and work towards making their websites easier to use.
In comparison, most of the free content usage websites like portals, email websites, social networking sites, news sites and public information websites like regulators and government ministries score fairly low on the user-friendliness.
This evaluation and classification of the top 121 highly popular websites in India was done by JuxtConsult by measuring these websites on 32 individual criteria grouped under 6 different ‘usability' aspect of a website. The 6 usability aspects tested were ‘branding', ‘navigation structure and value added features', ‘website design' ‘company and contact info', ‘contact responsiveness' and ‘technical parameters'. All the websites were measured on the 32 individual criteria to arrive at the comprehensive usability index, or ‘User-Friendliness Index' (UFI), for each website. The websites were then ranked and grouped on their ‘user-friendliness' based on their UFI score.
To make the study fairly comprehensive and representative, top 5-6 websites from 23 popular online categories were included. The top 5-6 websites from each of these categories were selected using a combination of the Alexa traffic ranking data and the user preference of these websites as measured through a large online Internet survey conducted by JuxtConsult in May 2006 under its ‘India Online 2006' study.
The 23 popular online categories included in the usability study, and the websites which topped with the highest UFI in each of them are as follows:
Online Category |
Top Website |
UFI Score |
|
|
|
Portals |
Yahoo |
0.60 |
Email |
Hotmail |
0.69 |
Job Search |
Jobstreet |
0.81 |
Info Search (English) |
Altavista |
0.69 |
Info Search (Hindi) |
Raftaar |
0.56 |
Shopping |
Shopping |
0.97 |
Ticketing |
Yatra |
0.84 |
Matrimony |
Shaadi |
0.88 |
Real Estate |
Magicbricks |
0.75 |
Financial Investment |
NSE |
0.78 |
Social Networking |
Date |
0.72 |
Blogging |
Typepad |
0.69 |
News |
Aajtak |
0.66 |
Games |
Miniclip |
0.69 |
Sports |
ESPNStar |
0.69 |
Music |
Music |
0.69 |
Cinema |
Santabanta |
0.63 |
Airline services |
Spicejet |
0.81 |
Bank services |
HSBC |
0.84 |
Telecom services |
Reliance |
0.81 |
Telecom handsets |
Samsung |
0.81 |
Regulators/ Gov. bodies |
NCW |
0.66 |
Govt. ministries |
Health ministry |
0.47 |
Further details on the methodology of the study, evaluation criteria used, and calculation of the user-friendly index of websites can be checked out at www.juxtconsult.com . |
