Sulekha.com Website Usability Study

www.peppersquare.com

© 2002-2009 pepper square. All rights reserved. Information in this document is confidential and proprietary to pepper square

U s a b i l i t y S t u d y S u l e k h a . c o m

B y

p e p p e r s q u a r e


Sulekha.com Usability study Page 1 of 10

Understanding Sulekha

• Online media for news and social networking through blogs, images etc.

• Online and mobile portal for local commerce - integrating yellow pages and classifieds

Objective

Aiming to provide an insight on how sulekha.com website can improve its performance in terms

of users experience, functionality, etc. pepper square brought out a list of issues where

sulekha.com requires revamp.

In order to enhance users experience, and website credibility and usability the site needs to be

restructured completely. The site provides adequate information but the arrangement of the

information on the site creates clutter and the information needs to be reorganized and

positioned well.

Users Profile

Data are collected from 3 different users, working in different departments of pepper square,

1. Age 32 with over 15 years of experience with various online mediums

2. Age 30 with over 6 years of experience in search engine optimization

3. Age 25 with over 3 years of experience in content writing and information architecture for

websites

Findings

Though approximately 4,000,000 users visit www.sulekha.com per month, the organization needs to

enhance users experience. We have brought out the issues where sulekha.com needs improvement.

1. Users find it difficult to navigate through the site as different navigation tabs and links are

provided for same page, which creates confusion

2. Home page and inner pages are overloaded by navigational elements

3. Important links (Advertise with us, Press, Media, SulekhaB2B) appear at the bottom of the

page. They remain unnoticed.

4. Lack of consistency: Each page appears differently; colours, features, navigations and

elements on the pages are different from each other.

o Overview pages of Real Estate, Buy and sell, Cars and Bikes contain a heading

“Let Sulekha get it for you!”, where as Home Services page

(http://yellowpages.sulekha.com/bangalore/home-services/532.htm) contains

two different headings “Looking for Home Services?” and “ Don't search. Let

Sulekha get the right Home Services to call you”.



o Buy and sell page contains a “Most Popular Items” table, where as Real Estate,

Cars and Bikes pages don’t showcase that.

o Design of the Search bar: On some pages Google Serach is featured, on other

pages Sulekha search is featured. Different colours and designs are used for

Search bar on different pages

o Lack of consistency in naming conventions. E.g. Cars and Bikes , Buy & Sell ,

Computers & Mobiles

• Appearance and treatment

Navigations for classifieds and yellow pages, and news, blogs, photos etc. appear similar.

News and blogs are treated as classified by the users.

E.g. Treatment of Expression tab (links to the Featured Blog page) is similar to Travel, Food

and Mobile (link to respective local business providers’ pages) at the bottom of the page.

• Positioning of the highlights

Highlights lost their appeal as they are placed in the middle of the body with other

navigations. Users do not always notice them.

Customer care response

Customer care team responses immediately, but representatives are not well trained. In response to

the query for buying an apartment, one of the representatives asks irrelevant questions; some of

them are listed below:

Sulekha representative: What is your budget to buy a home?

User: 10

Sulekha representative: 10 thousand?

Sulekha representative: Are you also interested in buying a bike or a car?

User: No, not now

Sulekha representative: You can advertise with Sulekha by posting your ads!

User: I don’t want to sell but buy

Sulekha representative talking…(Going off from the subject)

User (Hangs up…)



Visual View 1. http://www.sulekha.com/

Tag line has lost its appeal, looks like an advertisement

The two navigations Instant responses, Get it button and Post a Free Ad button link to same page i.e. http://yellowpages.sulekha.com/find-it-on-sulekha.htm?source=sulhome Post a Free Ad button appears at the bottom of the page as well.

This part of the page is overloaded by navigations, creating clutter.

Treatment of Blog tab is similar to Food, Movies, Travel etc.



Recommendation:

• Tagline needs to be placed more prominently. It carries the brand image of Sulekha.

• Sulekha viral “1000 year old lost art of…” Sulekha viral “1000 year old Lost Art…”is one of the

most important marketing tools for Sulekha and can be used more efficiently on the page.

• Navigations and highlights need to be rearranged and redesigned. Selected tab can have a

different colour from the tabs not selected by the users. Highlights look like navigation tabs,

need to be redesigned and can be placed more prominently.

These highlights have lost their appeal as they are positioned at the middle of the page

These highlights have lost their appeal as they are positioned at the bottom of the page

Important navigation “Advertise with us”, appearing at the bottom of the page, is not readable

The Viral has lost its appeal as it is positioned in the middle of the page



2. http://blogs.sulekha.com/

Recommendation:

• Instead of partner’s logo contest name would convey the proper message. Logos can be

placed in a different manner.

• Search option is not consistent throughout the site. There should be a prominent Search bar

placed properly (preferably Right-Top of all the pages).

• Featured posts and Recent posts are automatically extracted on the page, therefore no need

of navigation tabs for these two section

On clicking “Start Blogging” button and “My Blog” navigation tab, same page appears.

Google Search has lost its appeal. Moreover Google Search is appearing only for Blogs page, lacking consistency.

“Featured posts” and “Recent posts” are automatically extracted here, though Recent Posts and Featured navigation tabs are present.

In this section Associates’ logo appears as links, on clicking Blog Print “contest guidelines” appear.



3. http://blogs.sulekha.com/tags/tag.aspx?tag=blogbuzz

Recommendation:

• Logo should be positioned more prominently

• Blog buzz (Team Sulekha and the logo) should be featured on the particular Blog page. On

this page only blog headlines and brief can be featured.

• The logo is not readable.

• Purpose of placing Team Sulekha and the logo is not understood



4. http://www.sulekha.com/network/register.aspx

Recommendation:

• Select Your City option can be placed just above the Postal Code with a drop-down menu.

User will be able to understand better what he/she needs to provide.

“Select your city” doesn’t appear unless you provide the postal code.



5. http://sutapapsq.sulekha.com/dashboard.htm

Many different elements appear in this section. • Jayaram47 asks • Ebony for eclectic Indian cuisine • To get daily astro update your DOB “Update your DOB” highlight has lost appeal

This highlight doesn’t serve the purpose as it has lost readability.

The colour scheme of the page is a combination of Yellow and Brown, though the tab shows only Brown colour.

“Update your DOB” highlight has lost appeal



Recommendation:

• Page needs to be redesigned in terms of

o Colour o Appearance

o Uniformity

o Usability

So much of space is left unused while important highlight “Also on Sulekha” is placed at the bottom of the page.



6. http://yellowpages.sulekha.com/find-it-on-sulekha.htm?source=sulhome

Recommendation

• Keyword suggestion should be related to the keywords provided by the user.

• This page looks like a different site, needs to be redesigned in terms of

o Colour o Appearance

o Uniformity

o Usability

Entering food as a keyword displays various other suggestions like Used home electronic appliances and Home appliances services