Web site section review

July 4th, 2009
  • Hello, Would you please review the "Careers & Recruitment" section of the www.shell.com site from the user friendliness point of view? :-) /Lizardnation


  • Hi Lizardnation Having dabbled in the field of web site design, I hope I can give you a comprehensive review both from the layman's point of view and that of someone with a little technical knowledge. Accessing the page with a 56K modem connection the page loaded almost instantly which is always a good start, few users are likely to have a connection speed much slower than that. Superficially the layout of the page is logical and simple to navigate with the functional and user-friendly navigation bar in the left-hand frame. Before looking in depth at the site content I tested it in 800x600 monitor resolution instead of the increasingly common 1024x768 mode. This introduces a horizontal scroll bar which must be used to view all of the 'Web Features' right hand frame and might be seen as a slight design flaw. However, the page is still perfectly usable and I would not count that as a major negative point. The addition of small images next to the links giving access to sub-pages of each major section gives the page a more user-friendly feel, but they would benefit from being linked to the target page. Looking first at the 'Students and New Graduates' section, given the volume of information to be presented I thought that the page was very successful in breaking it down into manageable sections. When presented with a page of text at the base level of each category, the use of related images to break up the paragraphs made for an easier read and increased the visual interest of the page. Under the 'Areas of Employment' subsection, I thought the summary table was a good idea to explain which fields are open to people with which qualifications. Having specified a particular field, the explanations of the work involved were helpful and sold the company well. As a student myself, the online application form and facility to upload a CV under the 'Apply' section provide a strong encouragement to apply for a position with Shell. Moving on to browse the 'Experienced professionals' pages, the geographical breakdown of positions vacant improved the usability of the section. Again, the explanation of the skills required and work involved in each job was very thorough. Some details of the payment package available would maybe attract more interest from prospective employees though. Not having a particularly extensive knowledge of Shell, I found the 'About Shell' section very informative although I suspect that the 'News and Library' articles linked to were aimed at more of a business reader than I provided. From the user-friendliness point of view, I found it slightly irritating that when following the link to 'About Shell', the navigation menu completely changed and displayed the sub-menu for 'Our Performance' despite the fact that this was not the page being displayed. I suspect that this is an issue for the Shell site as a whole, and not specific to the 'Careers and Recruitment section'. I would definitely agree with alienintelligence-ga in the suggestion that a clickable map interface would benefit the 'Shell Worldwide' page. Other than this, listed sites were functional and logically placed. The help section of the site was brief and to the point. I thought it could maybe be a little more comprehensive, although for any reasonably experienced internet user I would have difficulty to think of any other potential areas of trouble. Overall I found the 'Careers and Recruitment' pages to be very user-friendly and hope my positive review reflects this. One comment on the Shell.com site as a whole which has been remedied on the C & R section is that the page title reflects solely the full page web address instead of a more expected 'Welcome to Shell.com' or the like. I hope that this answer has been useful to you; if you would like any further detail or clarification please do not hesitate to ask. mcfly-ga


  • Hello Mcfly, >The addition of small images next to the links giving access >to sub-pages of each major section gives the page a more >user-friendly feel, but they would benefit from being linked >to the target page. Would you reference the above missing link to the images with a URL? /Lizardnation


  • Hi, Sorry for not explaining that clearly enough. It wasn't any specific link I had in mind, but more a general idea for the site as a whole. For example, under the 'Students and New Graduates' section there are options to select 'Why join Shell?', 'Training & Development', etc. as linked to here: http://www2.shell.com/home/Framework?siteId=careers-en&FC1=&FC2=%2FLeftHandNav%3FLeftNavState%3D1&FC3=%2Fcareers-en%2Fhtml%2Fiwgen%2Fstudentsandgraduates%2Fstudents.html&FC4=%2Fcareers-en%2Fhtml%2Fiwgen%2Fimpulse6.html&FC5= My suggestion would be that although the text of the links works fine, it might be nice from a user friendliness aspect to link the images as well as the sub-section name to the new page. Hope this clarifies my answer satifactorarily. mcfly-ga :)







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