Returning to the UPS homepage I discussed in last week’s post Improving the UPS Homepage by Remembering Fitt’s Law, another problem concerns the checkbox. I’m really dismayed that it’s 2010 now and we therefore live in the future, but we’re still seeing sites not using <label> elements with checkboxes. And indeed, that is the case here—the ‘Remember this location’ label associated with the checkbox on this page is not clickable. This was also pointed out by Patrick McElhaney in a comment on the previous post.

This is another instance of where Fitt’s law applies—the tiny checkbox is a small target area for clicking, and so it makes sense to enlarge it by making the label clickable as a proxy for the checkbox itself. In desktop software on all major platforms (OS X, Linux, and Windows) the label of a checkbox behaves in just that way, and is always clickable.

I should note that, of course, on such a large site as UPS’s the changes I’ve been suggesting would have to be backed up by some A/B testing to ensure they achieve the desired effect and do not have any unintended consequences. Of course, too, UPS may be so big and critical to its customers that they would not abandon the site no matter the magnitude of its interface shortcomings. I would be willing to bet, though, that the changes would improve visitor satisfaction if not reduce abandonment, and any site can stand to increase the satisfaction of its users.

Stay tuned for one more critique of this page in an upcoming post!

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