Web Usability is an approach to the development of a website that incorporates direct user feedback throughout the development cycle in order to reduce costs and create products and tools that meet users' needs. Usability focuses on your users and lack of user feedback hurts chances of success.

Consequences of bad web usability:

Decrease in traffic and low number of returning users

• Decrease in brand awareness
• Increased cost to support phone/email enquiries as user cannot easily find information that is already published on the website
• Low responses to events published through the website
• Studies by Forrester Research estimate that approximately 50% of potential sales are lost from a site as users can't find data and that 40% of users do not return to a site when their first visit is a negative experience
• 70% of respondents abandon their shopping cart without making a purchase (Bizrate.com)

Benefits of good web usability:

• If your users cannot find what they want in your website, your website doesn't work. Improving the usability of a website is a fast and cost effective way to retain old users and acquire new ones.
• The results of applying usability in the design of a website:
• Increases traffic to the website
• Increases user satisfaction
• Promotes brand loyalty
• Increases sales

Big problems in the design are obvious just after doing a few tests with your users. When you sit with someone in front of your website, you can see immediately if they click on the right or wrong button, if they understand the labels …etc. As soon as you see 3 people doing the same mistake, it needs fixing, and it is easier to fix it when the site is being developed than when it has been launched.

Usability saves money by fixing problems before launching.

The Process

Understanding who your users are and what they want to accomplish in your website

Do you know who uses your website? Do you know why your users will log into your website? Give them what they want.

Developing an information architecture based on your user's feedback.

How your users think, categorize information, search for information is important to your website. Getting direct information from your own users will help create an easy to understand and use website.

Developing paper prototypes:

It is easier for a user to react to an existing example than to theorize what would work best. Useful results can be obtained by building a prototype site, with a minimum of text content and no graphics, for a first round of usability testing.

Usability testing:

Usability testing is an iterative process. The goal of usability testing is to ascertain what will help users accomplish their tasks and what may impede them. Using the prototype as a starting point, the usability consultant builds a set of scenario tasks and will ask users to perform. As the information about how successfully users do the tasks is reported, the prototype can be modified. Later, the design will also be tested. The final website will also be tested.

The whole process can be summarized as below:

Usability Research

Usability Testing