Website Usability - Pointing You in the Right Direction!
Posted by betwixtmarketing on December 20, 2007
Website usability is an often used term to describe a website’s user-friendliness and the extent to which users can use the information on the website to meet a specific objective. It is an important element of User Experience.
The usability of a website can be defined as the ease with which visitors are able to achieve specified goals. The usability of business/commercial websites is becoming a key differentiator for website owners in an increasingly competitive market.
The first port of call for those interested in learning more about this subject is the Jakob Nielsen website on Usability and Web Design. The website Usability.gov also lays down a very useful step-by-step usability guide:
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Plan - Develop, Processes, Project Team
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Analyse - Users, Task Analysis, Developing Personas
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Design - Website Requirements, Writing for The Web, Parallel Design
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Test & Refine - Usability Testing, Analysing Results, Test Reports
Whilst search engine marketing and promotion is important in order to drive visitors to your company website - it is what you do with those visitors which will ultimately determine your online success.
Once a potential customer arrives onto your website, they have to be able to actually navigate around/through the site and understand the content. Otherwise, your site is rapidly going to lose potetnital buyers, who will simply click-off and probably take their custom to your nearest competitor!
