Why usability is important to you



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Usability is the measure of the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system - whether a web site, software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device.

According to Usability Expert Jakob Nielsen: 'On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a web site is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a web site, they leave. If a web site's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a web site manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other web sites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.'
More: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

What is usability

Is your web site usable? There are several definitions for usability, but basically the following 4 characteristics can be considered usable:

* Quick and easy to learn;
* Efficient to use;
* Allows rapid recovery from errors;
* Easy to remember;

Does your product or web site have the above characteristics? Usability increases benefits for both parties: the User (potential customers) and the Provider (yourself).

Users benefits from usability
* Users are satisfied, not frustrated, with the product or web site;
* They enjoy interacting with the web site or product;
* They achieve their goals effectively and efficiently;
* They cultivate confidence and trust in the product or web site.

If your users are satisfied, they will become loyal, and may even recommend your product or service to others.

Providers benefits from usability

As a provider, you may benefit from usability in many ways, including:

* Reduced development time and costs;
* Reduced support costs;
* Reduced user errors;
* Reduced training time and costs;
* Return on Investment.

Misconceptions about usability

Misconceptions about usability's expense,' Jakob Nielsen says, 'the time it involves, and its creative impact prevent companies from getting crucial user data, as does the erroneous belief that existing customer-feedback methods are a valid driver for interface design.' More: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030908.html

How can usability can save your company

After all, have you ever wished there was one place that contained a list of everything you need to know to make your web site user-friendly? If yes, have a look at this 'User Interface Usability Checklist for Ecommerce Web sites' here: http://webnauts.net/user-interface-usability-checklist.html




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Lets face it, when a visitor does arrive it only follows that we should do our best to help them see the value in our website, no?

Welcome new visitor, here is our feed, blah blah... Can't we do better then that?

I see a lot of variations on the Welcome new visitor, here is our feed type of thing when I arrive at blogs and such these days. Sometimes this gets customized if the site determines that I am a "Googler" (visiting from a search engine) and then offers me some piece of text to try and make me become a passionate user of their site.

This strategy never makes me a passionate user.

What does work is when I read the page in question and then navigate around the site and find more great content.

So the trick should be to make great-content discovery the goal.

Welcome Googler, let us help you out

Here we present one solution that works for helping people discover your site. As a side effect it will increase your pageviews in a proper, natural way. (We have a whole pile of other solutions for this, however that manuscript post isn't quite ready yet.)

  1. Check referer string
  2. If search engine, grab query text
  3. Do a full text search on your content to find other articles on your site that are related to their search query
  4. Pass the resulting list to the reader in a user friendly way
  5. Maybe keep that list persistent for the session, unless they close it

What we have done is created a custom, on-the-fly navigation system based on their search query! This little widget should work to keep them poking around your site.

Placement etc.

We've been using this on several sites now (along with some other ideas alluded to above) and it works. Pageviews per user go up. Bounce rate falls (more on that in the future too).

We have had to play with the placement of this box: top of the page? Floated to the right/left of the main page content? Following them down the page (with js)?

As they say, your mileage may vary, but chances are you will get more mileage out of more readers, and that is a good sticky thing.



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