Ad Tech - www.ad-techlondon.co.uk/adtech2010/

The Ad Tech site reassuringly includes the event date and venue in the top banner, although one participant clicked on this information expecting more detail, which they did not find. The homepage has two prominent links to register for the event.

All participants struggled to find pricing information, as well as understand the structure of the event. Ad Tech is made up of three parts - expo, seminars and conference - but users assumed that the whole thing was free (in fact the conference part of the event incurred a fee). Heatmap hot-spots show that the use of ‘free' gets a lot of user attention despite being below-the-fold. The heatmap showed that sponsor logos were also looked at.

The lack of progress indicator on the registration form irritated participants, but the real-time personalised event badge was a comforting link to the offline event.
Worryingly, participants ignored conference prices displayed at the end of the free registration form because they felt that they had had enough by that point after completing a six-page registration form!
Task success: 100 per cent

VERDICT
Layout/priorities  3/10
Labelling/content 3/10
Forms/processes 3/10
User rating  3/10

Mobile2.0 - http://mobile20.eu/

The Mobile 2.0 navigation was easy to understand, aside from ‘App Circus' that was consequently overlooked by all of our participants. However, there was no link to the event registration or prices. These were finally found via an obscure text link at the bottom of a sub-page.

Participants were unhappy that Mobile 2.0 looked more like a blog than an events site. The homepage had no static introduction content and hyperlinks were an unconventional red. In addition, some non-hyperlinking copy was also confusingly underlined.

According to gaze data, the sponsor logos at the top of the right-hand column were viewed, but this decreased significantly further down
the page.

Negative aspects included the fact that the button to purchase tickets was hidden below the fold when the site was not displayed at full width. Registration was either found via the ‘Register for free here' text link or the ‘Buy tickets' button on the ‘About' or ‘Programme' pages. From a security point, participants were also concerned that the actual purchasing process took place in a new site.
Task success: 100 per cent

VERDICT
Layout/priorities  3/10
Labelling/content  1/10
Forms/processes 4/10
User rating  1/10

Microsoft TechEd - www.microsoft.com/europe/teched/

The Microsoft TechEd event had no requirement for sponsor logos and therefore devoted more space to content. Easy scanning of the second level of navigation set users' expectations of the size and depth of the site without having to leave the homepage. A lack of jargon and a clear hierachy of content made information gathering easy.

Gaze data shows that participants looked at the ‘Register Now' button in the header an average of six times each and also saw the quite small ‘Share this' panel (most likely due to the recognisable Facebook and Twitter icons). Icons were used to break page content into readable chunks and increase visual appeal without resorting to stock imagery.

The registration process utilised a fast-tracking single sign-on service but retained large clear buttons for first-time users. Whilst completing the form, which compensated for its length by clearly showing the stages of the process, participants were disconcerted by the ‘updating' icon that appeared when new additional data was required and questioned the necessity of the extra information.
Task success: 100 per cent 

VERDICT
Layout/priorities 4/10
Labelling/content  4/10
Forms/processes 4/10
User rating  4/10

Commentary
One participant highlighted the primary issue with all the sites: no overview of all event details. Location, price and registering are important elements in the decision to attend and participants were surprised at how hard it was to find this key information.

Participants did not like Mobile 2.0; it looked like a blog, avoided web conventions and the content was badly structured. For these reasons it comes in third place in our testing.

The word ‘free' on the Ad Tech website was appealing and dissuaded users from wanting to pay to attend the Ad Tech conference. TechEd is therefore our winner for its layout, find-ability and high participant rating.