I’ve just done what a lot of people hate doing, paid my TV Licence. For the first time, I used the online service for TV licence renewals. While it’s a useful service, and no-doubt saves lots of administration work for An Post, parts of the website design is pretty poor. I’m not sure how long this service has been available, but seeing as some of the €160 I spent on my licence last year probably went on web development, I thought some feedback was in order!

Site Homepage

There are a number of things that struck me about this page:

• Firstly, why oh why would they use Comic Sans font (in <font> tags) as a header for the page? Given the clean look of the site, the choice of this header seems strange.
• My next thought was: “What is the big empty rectangle doing in the middle of the page?”. This doesn’t show up in Internet Explorer (only Firefox & Chrome). I’m assuming it’s for some type of banner, but testing the look of the page in multiple browsers would have been a good idea.
• Finally, the banner “Click Here to Purchase” is out of keeping with the look and feel of the rest of the page. While it is eye-catching, as it’s intended to be I’m sure, I think the colours used could be more in keeping with the look of the site.

Site Login

Security for any web application is important. In the case of the TV licence application, they’ve chosen to use a 17 digit reference number and a 5 digit PIN number.

Using a 17 digit number that is given to users on a printed renewal notice is not user-friendly. This is made worse because the reference number is presented in a single string, with no spaces. This makes it difficult to transcribe and leads to user input errors. There is a reason why credit card numbers are split into groups of four with spaces in between – it makes them easier to read.

Even more user-friendly would be to use something that makes sense to the user, such as a readable word, a contact number, or email address.

Payment Screen

This is the main focus of the application. It is why users are on the site. And it too, could have some work done on it user-friendliness.  A requirement of proceeding with payment is that you accept the terms and conditions of the service. To do so, you need to be able to access the terms and conditions. When you click on the link to view Terms & Conditions, the window opens in the top left of the screen (shown below), making it far too easy to miss.

Some other enhancements to usability on this screen could be to present form dynamically according to the type of credit card selected by the user. For example, a Mastercard does not have an Issue Number. Rather than doing this, they have included the text “(if present)” beside the fields. This approach forces the user to think about options (and leaves the door open for errors), rather than making it as easy as possible for the user to accomplish their task.

In one way having a service such as this available is an excellent idea that makes (my) life easier. On the other hand, with some small enhancements, it could be much more usable.