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By Customer Insites

The following is an in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of three network vendor Web sites. To evaluate user experience, we reviewed the site's usability, depth of content, navigation tools and "salesmanship."

Usability. We define usability as the combined ability to provide a clear navigation system, graphics that support the content and tone, and use of those graphics (icons) to help users find key content and useful tools on the site.

Depth of content. We looked at depth of content and tools expressly aimed at the purchase decision and shopping process. We looked for content focused on product information: white papers, brochures, specs, comparisons and - especially important - advice. We also looked at how the site let users access such content easier via a reliable search engine, site map and customer support tools (online and offline).

Salesmanship. This goes above and beyond usability. Here we examined the clarity of the site's call to action. Does the site provide relevant choices that are intuitively labeled and given appropriate weighting to highlight what users need in order to accomplish their goals?

Arriving at our picks

Our evaluation team picked Juniper because of the excellence of its product information. In addition, its online customer support, namely Case Manager, was a great example of using an enabling technology to provide useful customer support. For these sites, we found that the prevailing challenge was the lack of customer support, both online and offline.

See Juniper review below

From nine medium-vendor sites, we chose Network Associates because of its first-rate navigation system and its truly helpful search engine. The search engine assists users by sorting through results via a graphical interface. By contrast, at least half of all other sites we evaluated did not have a reliable search engine, meaning the engine routinely spewed forth mostly irrelevant results.

Beyond these features, the Network Associates site incorporated a lot of information successfully by using logical, intuitive navigation systems. We also felt the Network Associates site provided the best example of good salesmanship in the medium-sized category. That is, it serves up comprehensive and compelling purchasing data that makes it easy to for you to use and find.

See Network Associates review below

From 12 large-vendor sites, we chose Microsoft because of its online customer support, and because of it is one of the most-visited sites among network managers. More than half of network managers surveyed named Microsoft as a frequently visited vendor Web site.

As we narrowed the field from 12 choices to one, we noticed that most large sites were struggling with what we call "sense of location." This means users can't easily tell where they are in a particular vendor's site.

In many cases, the problem clearly stemmed from acquisitions. Acquired companies had links from the host site, but frequently provided no way back. Or sometimes an acquired company's site would have a completely different navigation system than the main corporate site. As challenging as it is to integrate disparate sites into a single cohesive face, it is even more difficult for users to wade through such confusion.

See Microsoft review below

Site critique: www.juniper.net

The second, and more noteworthy, reason for highlighting Juniper is because it sports the cool "Case Manager," an online tool that customers and partners with annual service agreements can use to create, track and edit technical support cases. The result is a central database of technical support problems and solutions.

Checking out the Case Manager is definitely worth your while, although you'll have to dig a bit harder for it than we'd like you to have to. The Case Manager service is a wonderful benefit, but Juniper has buried the link to it deep on the Products page rather than displaying it at a prime spot on the home page or more prominently on the Products page. Click for example.

What's more, page design within Case Manager is inconsistent. Some pages so little resemble the rest of www.juniper.net that when they materialize it seems as if you've jumped to another site entirely. Click here for example.

That's a shame. Case Manager is one of the best features we came across, not just on the Juniper site but in all the sites we evaluated. See for yourself by checking out the online demo at www.juniper.net/casemanager/tour/.

So, while www.juniper.net offers best-of-breed characteristics in some cases, it is also representative of the small-vendor Web experience. In fact, the overall challenge with Juniper's site is navigation and ease of use, by far the most common complaint of Best Vendor Web survey respondents. As one survey respondent said, users shouldn't have to dig three layers deep to find something. Links to the most-used info should be on the home page.

You'll find Juniper's home page logically designed with clear structural indication of the types of information that are available within the site. Yet, Juniper has placed its main categories in homogenous graphics, with the emphasis seemingly on the company. That does someone looking for product information little good. Click here for example.

You'd be better served if Juniper emphasized products and then gave clear directions on how you should proceed into the site. Likewise, it should display the search function more prominently. Specifically, we would have liked to see a search button separate from the left navigation bar.

Once inside the site, you'll find a plethora of product information from the Products and Services page. But, because of the site's weak navigation, you'll have a hard time finding these important links. In fact, even the oh-so-important "Purchase Request" link is located below the fold at the bottom of the screen. Click here for example.

Weak navigational features can be helped considerably with a strong search engine; unfortunately, you won't get much help from Juniper's. We found searching www.juniper.net to be an unexceptional experience. To test how easy/hard it is to find product information, we did a search on "IPv6," the next-generation Internet protocol. The search's results page stated "7 of 7 matches," but only listed two documents. The first document was not very helpful, listing the searched term only once. The second seemed to bear a bit more relevance to the search word, listing it three times.

We also encountered some pages that require a login registration. After clicking off the registration pages, we hit the Search page link. Instead of the Search box above, we got another request to login and register - not a good thing for users to encounter.

All in all, we found the Juniper site to be a vintage example of innovation and frustration. If it used graphics, design and font size to play up its great content and cool tools, it could fix its navigational and usability problems. The site would also improve its worth if it helped you move from the research process to the purchase process.

Site critique: www.networkassociates.com

For example, the home page uses bright colors and larger fonts to attract your eye to key content. When we visited the site, we were immediately attracted to a VirusScan promotion on the left (prime Web page real-estate), then to Eppliance security products shown at the top right, and finally to the Y2K software products below. Click here for example.

Plus, Network Associates provides easy-to-spot categories such as "Products" and "Buy/Try" on the home page. You get lots of information and links in a logical fashion.

All this is not to say that the home page is perfect. For example, you have to scroll down to find the search engine and click on fine print saying "Search here" rather than the dominant but dormant "Site Search" icon.

Also, the search results page is partial to Microsoft Internet Explorer. If you're using Netscape Communicator 4.5, for example, search results appear in a broken table and you won't get full information. Any vendor on the Web must make sure that its site works in all popular browsers.

Still, these shortcomings are relatively minor compared to what the site does right. The search engine is by far one of the best you'll ever come across. It truly helps you hone in on the right data while providing numerous options for viewing results. For instance, you can set up a search to sort by relevance, file size, creation date - in ascending or descending order. Click here for example.

To test the effectiveness of the search technology, we searched for the term "IDEA," a common encryption algorithm. The engine returned 54 items, 10 to a page. On the first page, five items referred to the search term correctly in the context of encryption technology (rather than in the context of a brainstorm.) The remaining five were documents about dynamic encryption. With these results, we felt confident that this security vendor had a good amount of information on IDEA and encryption technology in general. More importantly, we were confident that the search engine could root out that information for users. Click here for example.

Next, we tested the availability of product information by clicking on "Buy/Try" from the home page. We found the Buy/Try page to offer a clear navigation system. In fact, once inside the site, navigation tabs on the top of the page match the hierarchy on the home page. That is, a "Products" tab is represented, as is "Buy/Try" and so on. You'll also find the links on the pages logically organized and distinct, and will quickly spot "TRY" and "VIEW" links highlighted in red. Click here for example.

In addition, Network Associates makes it easy to get to product evaluation downloads. The site offers demos of seemingly every software product the company sells. This is big plus, considering Best Vendor Web survey respondents named demos and free products as two of most important features a vendor's Web site could offer.

If you opt for product literature in addition to or instead of a demo, you'll find white papers, case studies, evaluations, testimonials and product differentiation documents. The site does a good job of navigating visitors toward these documents, which is a critical task that survey respondents repeatedly noted. "Vendors should keep all major subcategories of their products at your fingertips. Don't make the user have to hunt for material," one respondent summarized.

Product literature can be reached through the "Try" chart, or via "The Product Literature" tab on the home page or the top banner. One suggested improvement you might benefit from is if Network Associates added details about the type of documents being shown, as well as file size.

All in all, the Network Associates site offers what you desire most: intuitive navigation; a reliable, adjustable search engine; and lots of product information coupled with demos.

Site critique: www.microsoft.com

Because our evaluation was geared to examine sites for their usefulness in product shopping, we visited the home page to test its salesmanship. Three key entry points grabbed our attention immediately: a Microsoft Exchange2000 Server Beta 3 promotion, "Shop," and "Y2K," for appropriate resources.

This page is effective for other reasons as well. You can find customized content via a drop-down box and can get one-click navigation, a function of top and left navigation bars that drop down to show sub-categories. And we found the graphics to be effective in guiding us toward site features.

The main categories ("Product," "Support," "Search," etc.) at top right act as a placeholder for navigation. Moreover, navigation bars are consistent throughout the site so you won't forget whose site you're in - i.e., they provide a solid sense of location.

We entered the site by clicking "Enterprise Customer" under the "Business Customer" menu on the home page's left navigation bar. We were pleased to find the additional search tool on the left that lets you search the Enterprise category only. You've got to appreciate it when a company the size of Microsoft, which has products ranging from children's games to network operating systems, successfully narrows the site.

From a shopping perspective, we would have liked to see Microsoft raise its emphasis on "Doing Business with Microsoft" categories. This might let users who are interested in buying products and services more quickly find relevant product information. Also, while we liked being greeted with smiling faces on the Enterprise Customer page, who are these folks? It'd be nice if you knew who these people are, by name, title and corporate affiliation. Click here for example.

The site offered lots of advice, in the form of the "IT Toolkit IT Advisor Series." While you'll obviously have to take product advice with a grain of salt, you can find respected independent third-party analysis here. And the page designs were effective, with well-placed graphics and icons.

Still, one of the most important components to the vendor Web site is the search tool. Our next task, therefore, was to evaluate the search tool because that was the reason Microsoft.com received low reviews from participants in Network World''s Best Vendor Web survey. In fact, of those who named the site as "most frequently used," all but two said it the worst vendor site. Difficulty in finding specific technical answers was the reason most frequently given.

We opted to test the full-site search function, and clicked on the link on the top navigation bar. The Search page has a clean index of locations where the desired information is likely to be. A helpful, advanced search feature is the "Search Within Results" tab that lets you narrow searches. Click for example.

We typed in "IPv6" and the engine returned 41 results along with the "Search Within Results" screen. So we then typed "support" and further narrowed our IPv6 results down to 34 results. We found that the search engine was easy to use, and that it brought relevant results. Each result on the first page was relevant, providing technical support advice and information on our search term Each result linked to a preliminary document that appeared quickly in easy-to-read text.Click for example.

We then tested the "Product and Technology Catalog" for relevant shopping information and ease of which it assists the purchase process. We clicked "Microsoft BackOffice." Click here for example.

Notice that Microsoft has placed all the categories on the Exchange Server page onto the left navigation bar. Information is easily accessible. The search is in a more prominent position, giving users a search option wherever they happen to navigate.

For the site's enormity, we found that it escorted us to shopping information efficiently. It attempts to let users customize content based on their goals and, that failing, places the search tool in a prominent and consistent place. For the majority of broad scope searches we found the engine to be adequate, although we realize that digging up a specific piece of technical support information is a different category of search altogether.

Related links

Customer Insites is a Silver Spring, Md., firm that provides measurement services and technologies for Web sites to improve online experience. You can find it at www.customerinsites.com.

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