Internet usability: will your site’s users find what they’re looking for?Usability is vital to the success of a web development effort. But when budgets and/or schedules get tight, usability testing is often one of the first activities to be cut because developers and executives believe they already have a solid understanding of what users want and need. But do they? Most visitors to a website enter with a particular goal in mind: to find specific information, to locate a product or service, to connect with others who have common interests. But there are many things that can prevent a user from accomplishing what he or she intended—and one of the most common is the site's "usability," or its ability to facilitate the user's goals. Usability is a combination of many factors: visual consistency and layout, navigation, logic of process and functionality, underlying technology, and language and nomenclature. It is vital to the success of any Internet, intranet or portal development effort. Quite simply, research shows that if users cannot accomplish their goals within a specific—and usually very limited—period of time, they will go elsewhere. Unfortunately, though, when development budgets and/or schedules get tight, usability testing is often one of the first activities to be cut. The typical rationale: we already know what our users are looking for. How well do you know your visitors?There is only one good way to know whether your website is designed to help users accomplish their goals and, thus, yours. Ask. Most organizations initiating development or redevelopment of an Internet site do spend time to define business requirements, content, functionality and other desired attributes and later to gather feedback on their design efforts. But in a vast majority of cases, they only talk to internal audiences. A good example is the use of keywords—terms used throughout the website copy with the specific intent of enhancing search engine rankings. As part of this strategy, web designers and writers will include these words in prominent places throughout the page, including headlines, subheads, and links—the very places that visitors look when they are determining whether a site or page meets their needs. However, the keywords and phrases that visitors may actually use during their search can often be quite different than those suggested by internal users. Try this test. Conduct independent keyword research to identify the top 10 keywords and phrases that your target audience uses to search for information about a product or service that your organization offers. Then, ask some of your executives to develop similar lists of “must have” words and phrases. It’s not uncommon to find that these lists are quite different. Does your site enable or inhibit users?Word choice, or the ability of the site to “speak the user’s language,” is just one factor that affects usability. There are many others, such as: - Names and labels attributed to sections of information on the site. Do they correspond to users’ perspectives and expectations, or to internal organization structures?
- Amount of text on a page. Do visitors have to scroll to find key information?
- Density of text. Is the important information easily visible in headings or in the first or last sentence of paragraphs?
- Use of breadcrumbs. Can users easily figure out where they are within the site?
- Site performance. Do pages load quickly?
- Page layout. Do major visual elements on the page correspond with the way in which a visitor is likely to scan the page?
- Use of graphics. Do graphics overpower content or navigation elements?
- Ability to find basic information. The purpose of your site may be to generate interest in your services, but once your visitor has found that you offer the service she’s looking for, can she easily figure out how to contact you?
- Up-to-date content. In some cases, publishing processes make it difficult to keep content current. Will a visitor be willing to navigate through out-dated content in order to accomplish his or her goal?
- Number of clicks required to complete a task. Do your users have to click through to more than three or four pages to find what they’re looking for or accomplish their goals?
An investment with real return potential.There are a variety of relatively simple and cost-effective ways to assess and address usability as you design and develop a website (or any user application, for that matter). Some of these include: User interviews—this approach can provide useful input during the requirements-gathering phase, but it also is important to get continued feedback as design and development efforts progress. Sometimes stopping to collect a just little qualitative feedback can produce suggestions that will make a big difference. Heuristic evaluations—an evaluation of user-interface design that applies a set of established “rules of thumb” (rather than specific guidelines) that have been shown to influence usability. End-user testing—observing users as they interact with a site or a particular task within a site and identifying areas where users become confused or abandon the task. Yes, there is an investment—particularly in time. But the return can be high—higher than for many other activities that typically are part of a website design project. For example, a study by the Nielsen Norman Group, based on more than 80 Internet design projects, found that the best-practices design projects spent about 10 percent of the development budget on usability. And, it found that, following redesign, usability increased by approximately 135 percent. Finally, usability testing often provides another, sometimes unexpected benefit. By providing objective, tangible, third-party information, it can help resolve differences between internal parties—for example, marketing and IT—that have a way of cropping up and slowing development. In effect, it can help shorten the development cycle and speed up the process toward achieving your organization’s website goals. West Monroe Partners applies best practices and tools to help clients assess and improve usability of websites and applications. For more information, please contact Devin Breen,
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