Plan België: Usability Awards 2009 jury prize government or non-profit website

The website of Plan België, http://www.planbelgie.be/, was awarded the jury prize for ‘Most user-friendly government or non-profit website’ at the Usability Awards 2009.

What’s so good about the Plan België website?

1. Creative and user-friendly

Because most websites of usability gurus can’t exactly be accused of looking sexy (Useit.com anyone?), a lot of people seem to think user-friendly is synonymous with dull.  

Plan België proves these people wrong.

Jury comments:

• Graphically creative without losing sight of user-friendliness
• Infectious design
• Good looking website that does what it’s supposed to do

2. Good categorization and navigation

The main navigation (’What Plan does’, ‘Support Plan’, ‘About Plan’) is short and clear. The second level of navigation is also pretty good.

The overview pages make the most of the clear categorization.

3. Focus on top tasks

The website’s top tasks (’Become a Plan parent’ and ‘Donate’) are in the picture the whole time. The website is built around these tasks.  

4. Well-written, layered content

Fortunately, the website is more than one big cry of ’show me the money’. It has loads of interesting content. 

Two things stand out:

• The content is ’layered’. It’s presented to the visitor one tantalizing bit at a time instead of in one big gulp.  
• The writing is adapted to the web.

Is planbelgie.be perfect?

Do pigs fly?

A few critical notes from the jury:

• The website’s look & feel is pretty busy-looking. Not overly so but because of the excess of cross-links on the right side of some pages it can get too busy. Focus: the basis of every good website
• The breadcrumb isn’t exactly ideal. Read our 7 tips for a good breadcrumb
• Search results could be a lot better, especially the way they’re presented. Read our layout tips for search results
• The site doesn’t look too great in Internet Explorer 6, still good for at least 10% of visitors. Recent browser statistics

Would you like to know how we can help you improve your website?

• Register for our web usability and writing for the web training in Dutch
• Get a usability expert to have a look at your website
• Have a user test on your website

This article is about usability awards, Usability.