Patrick Lips – AA Gent: “Emotie is een slechte raadgever in ... - CxO

5
Varia
Testlab
For this issue we had a look at companies that provide (express)
delivery services, logistics services and the like. We
tested the sites of DHL, ABX Logistics, DPD, TNT and UPS
on IE6.0 SP2 and Mozilla Firefox version 1.5. The tests were
done in a very general way: we focused especially on appeal,
user-friendliness and tried to find defects.
DHL (www.dhl.com)
The site of DHL looks appealing and quite modern. It provides a
lot of information at a glimpse, but does not look overcrowded
and still informative and clear.
A lot of attention has been spent on the layout that permits the
user to easily find what he/she needs. The top menus have ‘sliding’
submenus and they remain visible whichever submenu
has been chosen. There is direct access to the most common
functions and overall the information is very well presented
(despite the rather low resolution in the width department).
To help the navigation a sitemap is available and in general navigating
is just child’s play by means of a combination of direct access
buttons, a drop-down menu and section specific sidebar menu. We
cannot imagine a site can be more user-friendly. Also performance
is extraordinary, despite having a very graphical interface.
The website offers a multitude of functionality and information.
Most common pages are Order Tracking, Booking of pickup, ordering
of material, etc. But also more sophisticated tools are
available such as a conversion calculator, currency converter,
Invoice generator and many more.
When the resolution is changed, we notice that the site is designed
for 800x600. It does not benefit from higher resolutions as
the width is not dynamically changed.
As a conclusion we can only say that DHL can state an example
for many out there that look for just that bit of more quality.
ABX Logistics (www.abxlogistics.com)
ABX Logistics provides us with a sober but functional layout.
With the present day standards, the site does not look very appealing,
but it does the job.
The basic functionality is offered through a frame-based approach
and uses a somewhat confusing navigation system. Different
sections of the site can only be reached from the home
page, since there is no global menu system.
Each section though has its own menu on the left hand side of
the page. When moving the mouse the left side menu the mouse
cursor changes to a text pointer instead of the usual pointing
CxO Magazine | August – September 2006 | www.cxonet.be
5 websites tested
Express Delivery Services
hand which is an offence to the basic rules of web design. On
some of the screens (track & trace), the top header disappears
completely which means we can only navigate back using the
browser controls.
This site offers some basic functions like Order Tracking and online
booking (only available in Dutch). There are a lot of excess
commercial information and marketing slogans throughout the
site, while the functionality itself is rather limited.
Order tracking is not global and only available through several
links, leading the customer to country specific websites. This is
not user-friendly and means that if you want to trace a shipment
in Spain for example, you need to “Hable espagnol”. Furthermore,
the French and Spanish sites need a user name and password
to access.
When navigating to the Tracking screen from “Opvolgen en traceren”,
you get the English page. When selecting “Track en Trace”
from the E-Tools menu, you get the Dutch page.
Overall we looked at a sober site that may be more appreciated
if some of the flaws were treated.
DPD (www.dpd.net)
The site of DPD has a sober layout that is not particularly appealing.
Information is dispersed across different screens, which
makes finding information sometimes confusing. Also a sitemap
is not available to have a better view of the structure and the lack
of a search function does not really help.
The site uses a Menu system with a tab bar and sub-bars offering
the necessary access to different pages, but is not as userfriendly
as other solutions. Also the response times are rather
slow.
Upon selection of the Country (Belgium), the default language
is English. There is no obvious way to choose another language,
although Dutch is available when choosing “Netherlands” as
country. French speaking visitors have to settle with the English
version. Sometimes, the site is reset to German, without any
obvious reason (This seems to happen when the window is left
open for some time).
>>