Web usability: The basics

What is web usability & why is it important?

Web usability is about making your website in such a way that your site users can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently. A usable website can reap huge benefits on to your website and your business.

Every £1 invested in making your website easy-to-use returns £10 to £100 (source: IBM)
A usability redesign can increase the sales/conversion rate by 100% (source: Jakob Nielson)

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’ is used for items you might wish to purchase

There are numerous other conventions like these - can you think of some more?

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 handful of dissatisfied site visitors.

Pages must download quickly

Studies have shown that 8.6 seconds is the maximum time web users will wait for a page to download (source: Andrew B. King - Speed Up Your Site). As of mid-2003 just 17% of UK web users had broadband so it's essential that your website downloads quickly on a dial-up modem.

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 page
Use CSS and not images to create fancy navigation items
Read this article about how to speed up the download time of your web pages

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. When we scan web pages certain items stand out:

Headings
Link text
Bold text
Bulleted lists

Did you notice that images were left out of that list? Contrary to the way in which we read printed matter, we see text before we see images on the Internet. 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:

Every time a link is opened in a new window the back button is disabled. Approximately 60% of Web users employ the back button as their primary means of navigation. If you do this then you're preventing 60% of your users from using their primary navigation - now that can't be good.
Don't use frames to lay out your website. Frames can cause a number of usability problems, namely:
- Disabling the back button (see above)
- Bookmarking not possible
- Impossible to e-mail the link to someone else
- Problems with printing
- Users feel trapped if external links open in the same window
- Search engine optimisation issues

There are lots of other ways that websites can place restrictions on its users - can you think of any more? Just think back to the last time a website really infuriated you - what annoying thing did it do to make you feel that way?

This article was written by Trenton Moss. He's crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

09 dec 2003 - 11

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