A Critical Analysis of Perlego's Website Presentation Strategy and UX

This report provides a comprehensive UX analysis of the Perlego website, focusing on its presentation strategy and potential improvements. It evaluates the overall UX impression using the UX Honeycomb framework, examining aspects like usefulness, usability, findability, credibility, accessibility, desirability, and value. The report identifies key user groups, including students, parents, and faculty, and analyzes their specific needs and personas. A critical analysis of the website's content and visual presentation strategy, specifically targeting student users, reveals strengths and weaknesses. Vulnerability issues faced by students, such as lack of knowledge on using online libraries, broken authentication, and insecure direct object references, are identified, and improvements are suggested to address these issues. Desklib offers a platform for students to access similar solved assignments and study resources.

Individual Portfolio

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY.............................................................................................................................3
The overall UX impression of the website.............................................................................3
The list of user groups in universities and their personas targeted by the website................4
Choose ONE user and critically analyse the website's presentation strategy........................6
Identify vulnerability issue/s that the chosen user group may face and suggest
improvements for the website presentation to address the issue/s.........................................7
UX research to inform the improvements..............................................................................8
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................10
Books and Journals:.............................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Today's business environment is becoming highly competitive in nature. This is the
main reason that organisations should use UX design to increase the competitiveness of the
company. UX design is found to be a process that is used for the purpose of increasing the
experience of customers (Moore & Arar, (2019)). It is the process of designing products and
services digital physically that should be easy to use, useful as well as delightful when
consumers interact with the product. It is very important for an organisation that their
consumers find value in the products of the company. It stands for user experience which is
the experience and interaction of users with company products and services. This report will
be discussed the suggestions required by Perlego in the presentation strategy of content and
visuals. It also includes the suggestions for improving presentation which helps to enhance its
accessibility for users with and without vulnerabilities.
MAIN BODY
The overall UX impression of the website
It is identified that a fraction of seconds is taken by visitors in order to form an
opinion about the website (Yang, (2018, March)). Things like reviews, testimonials and high-
quality blogs also contribute to the credibility of the website but the first impression is based
on the things which can immediately be taken by the user. This is the reason that first
impression matters in the visual design of the website. It is necessary to understand the UX
impression of the Perlego website. People take on leave 50 milliseconds for forming an
opinion about the website whether they will leave or stay on the website. The first impression
was found to be dependent on many factors such as structure, symmetry, colours, spacing,
fonts, amount of text, etc. For that purpose, the UX honeycomb framework is effective to
analyse the impression of the website. This framework includes 7 important consideration
which is necessary to be considered by the website such as credible, desirable, accessible,
usable, findable, useful and valuable. These are the important consideration that should be
considered by an individual in order to analyse the impression of the Perlego website. It can
be further studied with the below explanation:
 Useful: It is very important that the website should be useful and serve a purpose to
the target customers (Moore, (2018)). It is necessary that users should be in the eye of
the beholder. In the case of the Perlego website, it is found at the website to be very

useful as it is the online University that provides information and many supporting
sources to the students as well as other people.
 Usability is not equal to usefulness as usually concerned with the ability of users to
achieve their end goals effectively and efficiently. It becomes necessary for websites
that it should be intuitive enough for users so that there able to understand the website
the first time (Hartson & Pyla, (2018)). In the case of the Perlego website, the
usability was found to be not affected because it does not provide any tutorial or help
to the users for getting familiar with the website.
 Findable is all about navigation which provides direction to the consumers or users
for finding their end goal. In the Perlego website case, the findable is found to be
effective as any individual can search their collection from the option provided by the
website in the middle of the website.
 Credibility is about the ability of the user which is concerned with the trust in the
product (Nguyen & Dupuis, (2019, September)). The trust in terms of ethics, accuracy
and durability. In the case of the Perlego website, it is identified that any individual
can give their credibility as it includes accurate data and information and have a
durable nature as any people can access at any time.
 Accessible: It is found to be one of the most important elements which should be
considered as a product or service and should be accessible by users. It is found that
accessibility in the Perlego website is not affected because it takes a subscription for
accessing the books and information on this website. So, every person is not
accessible the books and knowledge provided by this website.
 Desirable is concerned with the activity in which users want to get products and
services of that company. It is all about the repetition of a company (Pavlovic,
(2020)). In the case of the Perlego website, it is found that they have an efficient
image in front of the consumers.
 Valuable is concerned with the company which should be delivered value to the
customer. It is depended on the users. It is necessary for organisations to make a
balance between business priorities and customer wants. It is found that the customers
are not as happy with the Perlego.
The list of user groups in universities and their personas targeted by the website
The University website is not used only by students as it includes many user groups.
The user groups include prospective and current students, faculty and parents. These are the

main users of the Perlego website. Each group has their own interest and purpose. It is very
important to analyse their needs and wants. The needs and activities of each group are
mentioned below:
 Students: University is full of opportunities and Perlego found to be an online
university library that is used by students in order to get unlimited excess to all
learning resources. It is identified that there are many students who are not able to
afford to buy textbooks. This is the main reason that this website is very helpful as a
simple subscription provides unlimited access to all learning resources (Oyibo &
Vassileva, (2021)). It includes a large number of books with a large number of topics
such as architecture, art, biological science, business, education, computer science,
design, history, etc. These are the topics that can be read by any student according to
their subject. Perlego is found to be targeted all types of students as their website is
not limited to one particular subject as it is an online library that includes a large
number of books.
 Parents: Generally, books are read by students but this online library has a wide
variety of books so any individual can contact the library. Parents are also can interact
with the library. It includes many books which act like novels. So, parents can use
these types of books. Parents can use books for themselves as well as for their
children. Perlego has targeted those parents who want to get an idea for the study of
their children. For example, there is a book that is available on Perlego’s website i.e.,
Getting Parents on Board. This is the book that helps K-5 parents in order to increase
students of achievement in literacy and maths. According to the research, it is
identified that parents who are involved in the schools with the students lead to higher
test scores. So, in this way, parents are users of this online library University.
 Faculties: It is very obvious that faculties are also used these types of libraries,
especially online libraries. Faculties are found to be one of the important users of this
online library University. The reason behind this is faculties use the books of this
university for increasing and enhancing the knowledge of the subject which they teach
to the students (Frishberg & Convertino, (2020)). In addition to this, they can also use
books for enhancing their knowledge and make notes for the students. For extra
knowledge about the subject, they use this type of website which is very easy to
access and faculties can use the website at any time and at anywhere.

These are the important user groups that use online universities including a wide
range of topics and books. It is necessary for the website that they need to understand the
needs and wants in an effective way which helps them to achieve the goals and objectives of
an individual.
Choose ONE user and critically analyse the website's presentation strategy
For the purpose of analysing websites presentation strategy, a student group is chosen.
Students under forced and primary users of any online library website and that's why this
group is chosen to analyse the Perlego website presentation strategy (Kim, (2018)). For the
effective analysis of presentation strategy, it is necessary to analyse their content and visual
presentation which include information and aesthetic presentation. Both are separately
analysed which helps to give an overview that how is the website presentation strategy.
Content (info) presentation i.e., strengths vs weaknesses
Strengths Weaknesses
 The website is providing a wide
range of information and content to
the students. It is identified that
Perlego covers 950+ topics and
includes 800000 textbooks
(Acharya, (2018, August)). It is very
helpful for increasing the skills and
knowledge of students.
 That means any field of students can
find their resource material in an
easy way.
 The content can find very easily by
students as they have the option of
searching after opening the site.
 Students are facing a problem of
slow internet connectivity during the
search for books.
 For searching a targeted book,
students are taking extra time.
 There also have a problem of
inadequate computer access and lack
of library orientation.
Visual (aesthetic) presentation i.e., strengths vs weaknesses
Strengths Weaknesses
 The main is the strength of visual  Visual presentation of the Perlego

presentation of the website is that
there uses books photography which
shows that it is a library and any
individual can access the book and
information.
 It becomes easy for students to
understand that this is an online
book library.
website is found to be good but not
much effective because it does not
use any images which give
information to the consumers and
provides suggestions to the students
for identifying their books and
knowledge.
Identify vulnerability issue/s that the chosen user group may face and suggest improvements
for the website presentation to address the issue/s
There are many types of issues identified by the students’ group in the website
presentation (Kang, (2018)). It is very important to improve the website presentation in order
to address those issues. Some of the important issues are mentioned below that show how
user groups are facing challenges in order to operate the website:
 The first and foremost issue faced by students during the online website is a lack of
proper knowledge on how to use information in the online library. It is identified that
sometimes a student does have not enough knowledge to use the information on the
online library. Due to this, they are not able to enjoy the services that provide by the
online library.
 Due to insufficient user education, students are unable to take services of online
libraries.
 It is also identified that there is a problem that might occur is broken authentication.
The URL contains the session ID and it can be a leak. Maybe the password is not
encrypted in storage or transit. This will create a problem that the people are also
allowed for taking access to the resource material of the website.
 It is identified that some more disadvantages of the digital library are identified such
as interface design, equity of access, digital preservation, information organisation,
interoperability between software and systems, etc
 In addition to this, there is an issue of insecure direct object references. It is identified
that internal objects such as a database key or a file can be exposed to the user. It
creates a problem as a tacker can use this reference and access all the data in the file.

 The wide range of collection also becomes an issue in front of the students as they are
unable to understand which resource is best for them and improve their knowledge
and information. It becomes time-consuming to filter out the best one.
These are the above vulnerability issues that face by student groups during accessing
of website. it is necessary for a website that this should take immediate actions for improving
the presentation of the website so that it can address these kinds of issues. Some of the
suggestions are mentioned below:
 It is suggested that the website should have the first video which shows how to access
the library so that any student can easily access that library.
 It is also just had that website should use double encrypted authentication which helps
to reduce the issue of leaking any information or broken authentication.
 It is recommended to the organisation that they should improve the security of the
website and also provide the filtration feature to the student so that they are
consuming less time in finding out their books.
UX research to inform the improvements
The above discussion shows that it is very important for a website to get some
improvements and for that purpose UX research is necessary to conduct which helps to
inform the improvement needed in the website (Steimle & Wallach, D. (2018)). UX resources
are concerned with the systematic study of target users so that they are able to inside the
design process. For that purpose, there are many various methods which help to uncover the
problems and design opportunities. With the help of UX research, it becomes easy to give
users the best solution. It often begins with qualitative measures which are necessary to test
the insight of design. For that purpose, it is necessary to use a structured approach for
gathering data from users. It also gives the clearest information. Then it becomes beneficial
for interpreting the findings which help to build the value inside the design. It can be done on
the basis of two additional approaches such as attitudinal and behavioural. This analysis
shows that it is very important for a website to conduct UX research so that they are able to
inform the improvement.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above discussion of user experience that it is very
important for each type of organisation whether it is a private or government to use the best
UX design which helps them to provide value to the customers. The success in the growth of

a company depends on the experience of customers which they enjoyed after consuming the
products and services. In this process, UX design is playing an important role as it provides
extra value to the consumers and gives a reason why they are choosing the product and
services of the company. This report analysed the UX design of an online library website in
which it is identified that there are many types of issues faced by websites in order to increase
the effectiveness of UX design. It also included some recommendations which help a website
improve its UX design.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Moore, R. J., & Arar, R. (2019). Conversational UX design: A practitioner's guide to the
natural conversation framework. Morgan & Claypool.
Moore, R. J. (2018). A natural conversation framework for conversational UX design.
In Studies in Conversational UX Design (pp. 181-204). Springer, Cham.
Hartson, R., & Pyla, P. S. (2018). The UX book: Agile UX design for a quality user
experience. Morgan Kaufmann.
Pavlovic, M. (2020). Designing for ambient UX: design framework for managing user
experience within cyber-physical systems. L. RAMPINO, I. MARIANI, 39.
Oyibo, K., & Vassileva, J. (2021). Relationship between Perceived UX Design Attributes and
Persuasive Features: A Case Study of Fitness App. Information, 12(9), 365.
Frishberg, N., & Convertino, G. (2020). Barriers and supports for UX/Design leaders: from
tactical to strategic collaboration. Design Management Review, 31(4), 18-25.
Kim, J. Y. (2018). A study on UX design process lecture based on modified PBL (problem-
based learning). Journal of the Korea Convergence Society, 9(1), 117-131.
Kang, H. R. (2018). A study on the UI/UX design of object control application using wireless
communication. Journal of Digital Convergence, 16(1), 281-286.
Steimle, T., & Wallach, D. (2018). Collaborative UX Design: Lean UX und Design
Thinking: Teambasierte Entwicklung menschzentrierter Produkte. dpunkt. verlag.
Yang, Q. (2018, March). Machine learning as a UX design material: how can we imagine
beyond automation, recommenders, and reminders?. In AAAI Spring Symposia.
Acharya, K. R. (2018, August). Usability for user empowerment: Promoting social justice
and human rights through localized UX design. In Proceedings of the 36th ACM
International Conference on the Design of Communication (pp. 1-7).
Nguyen, J., & Dupuis, M. (2019, September). Closing the feedback loop between ux design,
software development, security engineering, and operations. In Proceedings of the
20th Annual SIG Conference on Information Technology Education (pp. 93-98).