Web Usability Explained

Web usability is about building your website in such a way that your site users can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently.

Redesigning your website with usability in mind can increase your sites sales/conversion rate by 100% and traffic by 150%. Web usability is extremely important and has numerous benefits:

Increase in (return) site visitors
Users will leave your site if they can't find what they are looking for
Users whom experience problems on a website are not likely to return
The average e-commerce site could increase its sales by 79% with a usability redesign
Usability redesign increases the sales/conversion rate by 100% and traffic by 150%
Studies indicate a user will wait only 8.6 seconds for a page to load, longer & they're gone.
Faster download times

What is web usability & why is it important?

There are huge benefits for those who take usability seriously:

Every £1 invested in improving your website's usability returns £10 to £100
A web usability redesign can increase the sales/conversion rate by 100%

Your website has to be easy to navigate

Users have gradually become accustomed to particular layouts and phrases on the Internet, for example:

Organisation logo is in the top-left corner and links back to the homepage
The term 'About us' is used for organisation information
Navigation is in the same place on each page and adjacent to the content
Anything flashing or placed above the top logo is often an advertisement
The term 'Shopping cart/basket' is used for items you might wish to purchase

There are numerous other conventions like these that enhance your website's usability.

Don't underestimate the importance of these conventions - as the Internet matures we're getting more and more used to things being a certain way. Break these conventions and you may be left with nothing but a website with poor usability and a handful of dissatisfied site visitors.

Pages must download quickly

Usability studies have shown that 8.6 seconds is the maximum time web users will wait for a page to download. As of March 2004 just 25% of UK web users had broadband so it's essential for optimal usability that your website downloads quickly.

To speed up the download time of your website we recommend you do three things:

Use CSS and not tables to lay out your web pages
Use CSS and not images to create fancy navigation items

Information should be easy to retrieve

We read web pages in a different manner to the way we read printed matter. We generally don't read pages word-for-word - instead we scan web pages. When we scan web pages certain items stand out:

Headings
Link text
Bold text
Bulleted lists

Contrary to the way in which we read printed matter, we see text before we see images on the Internet. For optimal website usability don't place important information in images as it might go unnoticed.

Restrictions must not be placed on users

Don't prevent your users from navigating through the Internet in the way that they want to. For example:

Don't open numerous new windows
Don't use frames to lay out your website
Don't disable the back button
Frames make bookmarking impossible
Frames make it Impossible to e-mail the link to someone else
Frames cause problems with printing
Users feel trapped if external links open in the same window
Frames cause Search engine optimisation issues
$25 billion is lost every year due to website usability issues

There are lots of other ways that website's can place restrictions on its users, ultimately damaging their usability.

For more information on Firecurl's solutions contact us.