Kenya Revenue Authority has launched an online portal to enable online registration of PIN (Personal Identification Number). Cyber cafГ© users should only pay for the usual cyber cafГ© fees.
You need to have the following information ready; ID Number, Date of birth, District of Birth, Mother's Last Name, Father's Last Name and your Year of Birth
Download a PDF guide for PIN registration
To register for the PIN go to www.kra.go.ke/portal/.
On your right navigation click Taxpayer registration, under E-registration Services.
Next page is written "Welcome to KRA Online services. Please enter your 'User Id' and 'password' to access to the system services."
Click on the link New Taxpayer
Next page is written:
"KRA has some information from you that allows you get a PIN." Resident ? Non Resident ? Company ?
Choose and click Validate
Next page; fill in the following; ID Number, Date of birth, District of Birth , Mother's Last Name, Father's Last Name and your Year of Birth. Note: For the Date of birth select day on the calendar, month (from the pull down menu) ; for year click the button with three dots. On the pull down menu 2009, and click on the – sign until you get to the year you were born.
Review:
This service is a step in the right direction and should be met with praise. At the very least a shorter queue is expected at the Times Towers and this will save a lot of time for those applying for the PIN certificates.
The only barrier to this service is that the web developer overlooked usability of the service. This is very evident in that fact that visitors to the website have to ask for assistance from cyber cafГ© attendants. If web usability had been factored in the development process of the website then KRA Sessions with Cyber Cafes owners will not happen again, saving taxpayers money. And cyber cafe attendants will not, "have taken the liberty to introduce exorbitant charges relating to the services."
Web usability according to Wikipedia is an approach to make web sites easy to use for an end-user without assistance. The goal here is, "Don't make a visitor think!" The broad goal of usability can be:
- Put the most important thing in the right place on a web page or a web application.
- To give the correct choices to the users, in a very obvious way.
- Present the information to the user in a clear and concise way.
Put most important thing in the right place: The url www.kra.go.ke/portal/ was advertised on radio local daily's as a place where you register for you PIN. In this instance, Taxpayer registration is the main goal for visitors accessing the website.
A link to Tax payer registration should therefore be obvious, prominent on the landing page. The link for Taxpayer registration is hidden on the right navigation in small text. A visitor to the website gets there after trying all the other links on the website.
Give the correct choices to the users in a very obvious way: Then the page that follows: the link for New Taxpayer is hidden by the text boxes for ‘Identification' and 'password'.
While filling the field for date of birth there is button to click to be able to input the day/month/year. The button is not obvious. It should have a call to action like click here.
I hope these pointers will help the designer make something that is easy to use. It will save the KRA time spend teaching the public how to use the online service and will prevent cyber cafГ© clients from paying for an otherwise free service.
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