By Anne Verge
Usability: we've all heard that word thrown a lot in terms of web design. But what does it really mean?
Usability is the quality of user's experience when they visit your site.
Usable websites boost the performance of your site by:
increasing productivity and customer satisfaction
increasing sales and revenues
just making it easier and faster for your visitors to find the information they need.
The key term here is ease of use. How long would a typical visitor take to find what they need? Even better, how long would it take your grandma to find what they need? Typically, if a user can't find what they need in five seconds, you've lost them. They're going to another site.
Five things you can do to help increase usability
Navigation. Probably one of the most important things to consider. How easy is it for users to find what they need? Is the navigation clear and intuitive? How many clicks does a user need to take before they gets where they want? Two is good. One is best. People tend to become fearful if they get too far into your site and can't find their way back. Organize related content into clear and consistent categories, and think about adding a search function.
Clear up clutter. Don't overload your visitors with a bad case of optionitis. Also, keep in mind that one of the best tools a web designer can use is what we call white space. Simplify the less important details and you give the rest of your elements much more power. Picture this: You are in a room, with 15 people all yelling at once. How do you know who to listen to? Design elements can yell or whisper. It is much more effective to have few "yelling" elements and let the rest whisper. White space also makes content more readable. A study (Lin, 2004) determined that efficient use of white space between paragraphs and in the margins of text increases reader comprehension by almost 20%.
Make Links Look Clickable. And Make Clickable Images link. A study (Van Schaik and Ling, 2003.) found that blue links are easier to click than black ones. Make sure that any links stand out enough and preferably have a rollover function like underline to indicate what they are. Conversely, if you have an image with a call to action, it's probably a good idea that you link that image to a part of the site that enables a user to make that action. (ex: call us now! - with a link to your contact page.)
Get rid of flash. Stop it. Seriously guys. There are so many other alternatives these days, why make a user have to intall a plugin and wait for something to load just for an animation? I like usability jedi Jakob Nielsen's explanation:
"Flash tends to degrade websites for three reasons: it encourages design abuse, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction principles, and it distracts attention from the site's core value."
Additionally, if a lot of the textual parts of your web design are in flash, it results in some powerful disadvantages when it comes to SEO.
Call to action. What do you want your users to do once they've reached your site? Make a purchase? Contact you? Make this process as easy and painless as possible. And give it top priority in terms of visibility on your site..
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