There is one belgian website that gets loads of traffic at this moment. Not because it’s so interesting or because it’s so much fun to visit. No, the only reason that milions of Belgians are surfing (or should I say strugling) on TaxOnWeb.be is the simple fact that it’s even more hassle to fill in the paper counterpart. So people are using this website to fill in their taxes. A platform paid with their tax money. But is this platform paid by the user,  designed for the user?  Is it user-friendly?

A simple an short answer: not yet.

We took a few minutes of our time to pull one screenshot of Taxonweb.be through our Online Usablity tool (UserPlus Advisor). As a result we have generated a usabilty checklist to verify why people have the feeling that this platform isn’t designed with human beings in mind. After running over the different questions, the UserPlus Advisor gave us a score. We can now say that this specific page of TaxOnWeb has only usability score of 60%.

A few example checklist items that led to this poor result:
“Is clearly indicated which data entry fields are required and which are optional?” – No
“Is the user’s position in the complete task clear at all times?” – No

It’s a good thing that e-government is finally taking of in Belgian. The E-id in Belgium is a very good step towards a digital society. But the design of this tax platform is simply an digital copy of a (horrible) paper document without using the possibilites of digital web forms.

e.g.: People have to navigate from ‘Box’ to ‘Box’.  Paper document have limited space. So in orde keep structure on the tax documents they use different Boxes with Roman numbers to refer to different parts. But online you don’t have to use this concept. Use more descriptive links instead of ‘BOX VIII’ and make your pages as long as needed. Auto-check input fields, give inline feedback and so on. But that’s another story. What do you think about the usability of this online tax service?

For the full result of our 1 page expert review, you can go directly to the UserPlus advisor results page.

Do you want to run your own online expert review with our UserPlus Advisor? Go to www.userplus.com and start your free review now!

If you’re into usability (and we think you are), you should be in Munich right now. Hundreds of UX people gathered there to inspire each other, to meet new people and to get the latest industry news. So we joined the UPA event as well and even managed to have a nice booth (next to the bar!). We took this opportunity to present our product the UserPlus Advisor. The feedback we got so far is really positive! It’s nice to see how UX experts and usability consultants are reacting on our new product. Thx a lot already for the comments and feel free to sign up at upa.userplus.com Give it a try and let us know what you think.

And for those at the conference itself, there are more stickers available at our booth. Use them to tag the world so we can build a more user friendly environment for all of us! Thx!

We at UserPlus live at the intersection of two worlds: web and usability. Both worlds have their experts with their own hot stories, innovative start-ups and remarkable projects. Keeping track of all the buzz in both worlds isn’t easy. The good news is that both worlds have attractive international events where we’re able to keep in touch both communities.

Last week we visited The Next Web conference, one of the most famous and respected web events in Europe. It was the city of Amsterdam that welcomed us together with thousands of other web enthusiasts. In order to get our share of eyeballs we installed our own mini-booth. Since we participated in the start-up rally we even got the chance to do a small pitch on stage. Several international start-up blogs picked us up. All of this resulted in a remarkable growth of new beta-testers for our first usability product: The UserPlus Advisor. For those beta-testers that are still waiting to get their account activated, hold on! We are doing some small updates this week and will contact you soon.

To strengthen our network in that other world, the usability scene, we will visit Munich by the end of May. Germany will be hosting this edition of UPA’s yearly event. Looking at the latest reports it seems the Usability Professionals’ Association is ready to welcome more that 700 people already. We are one of them since we arranged a nice booth at the event itself. At our stand, next to that bar that is, we will give live demo’s and have a moment to chat with other usability professionals. So if you’re in the neighborhood feel free to pass by.

Cya

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