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Usability – The
Force Behind the Outcomes
The all important outcome
measures for businesses as a whole tend to be sales (£) and profit (£).
This simple end measurement of essentially succeeding or failing is easy to
understand in itself but the multitude of changing factors and variables within
and outside of the business are where the complication lies – particularly
in areas which are less able to be captured and clearly represented with a simple
figure. Just as this is the case on a business level, so there is a similar
situation (albeit on a smaller scale for many webmasters) with the ‘usability’
of a website.
What is Website
Usability?
On the surface this refers
to how ‘easy’ it is for website visitors to use your website. Dig
deeper into this and you’ll see that:
- People are motivated
to use your web pages to satisfy a need. This interest and desire may have
been stimulated / arisen from a number of influences (online or offline).
- There is a ‘goal’
to visitor’s behaviour but there is also a limit to their patience,
time and goodwill when they land on your web pages.
- There are ‘subjective’
variables at work but you still need to be able to manage your website i.e.
find a way to measure what’s happening.
Just a small scratch of
the surface therefore can begin to reveal the complicated challenges for web
masters / website owners. Thankfully however these are common challenges and
therefore have been the focus of study and research. This and the experience
of webmasters / website owners have revealed many important guidelines for improving
‘usability’.
Where This Subject
Fits in the Web Marketing Puzzle
Usability feeds into and
helps create Conversion i.e. your website visitors ‘taking action’
on your website – submitting their contact details, buying something online,
calling you, emailing you, downloading something. Your website should be designed
to maximise conversion, and the ‘usability’ of the website should
contribute in a positive way to this. Conversion can be numerically measured
i.e. the conversion rate of your website is % of visitors who e.g. bought something,
filled in the form – whatever is the important ‘goal’ you’re
measuring. Taking the ‘unique visitors’ figure (see your web stats)
is probably the best type of visitor to take into account here. You would also
need to take other steps to get a really accurate figure i.e. by asking all
those who phoned or contacted you whether they got the number from your website.
Accessibility is part of
usability and involves making sure as much as possible that your web content
can reached and experienced in a meaningful way by all web users, regardless
their different situations and challenges e.g. different browsers and browser
capabilities and screen resolutions, those using special readers (visually impaired
people) etc. Keeping things simple and using languages and types of content
which are known to be the least challenging and most adaptable is often a good
way to help increase your website accessibility / decrease exclusivity.
Current Usability
Guidelines and Theory
Current thinking and theories
on usability incorporate many things including existing knowledge about human
behaviour in general (perception, learning and memory), observed and recorded
behaviour on the web (e.g. eye tracking, tracking tests and programs), theories
and thinking from advertising, the espoused opinions of Online Marketing experts
etc. There are however some basic ‘real world’ points to remember
when trying to make your web pages more usable:
- If it can’t be
seen or found it’s unlikely to be used. This seemingly small statement
covers a wide area of usability e.g. the links to your conversion routes should
be prominent / should visibly stand out from the background (the web page
background and the other content). This can be as simple as using brightly
coloured, attention grabbing buttons / graphic links and placing them in several
places throughout the website e.g. in the top are of pages, and near compelling
sales copy and sales propositions. As well as links, important information
shouldn’t be hidden from your visitors.
- Minimise the need for
‘questioning’ thought. Your web pages will appear and ‘feel’
easier to use if the user doesn’t have to internally ask questions about
the structural and navigation aspects of the website e.g. where they are now
and what they need to do to get to what they want. Your web ‘copy’
should also be designed to answer rather than create questions.
- Your website visitors
behave in a way that is unique to the Web. Their attitude is likely to be
what is termed ‘WIIFM’ (what’s in it for me) – they
are focused on their own needs being satisfied quickly and easily and not
on you, your company, your experience etc. Your visitors are unlikely to read
all you text and then make a considered decision about which link to click
on – they are more likely to ‘skim’ and ‘scan’
read your web page and begin clicking on links that look like they may be
related to their motivations. In short these are more arguments for making
calls to action clear and prominent.
- Make the navigation system
in your website clear, consistent, intuitive, and just plain ‘easy’
to use. Often it is best to take advantage of widely accepted conventions
e.g. links are blue and undelined, other non-link text is not, a main vertical
navigatioin menu can be found on the left hand side of pages etc. Buttons
and links are clearly and obviously labelled. In larger websites, breadcrumb
navigation can let users know exactly where they are within the website at
any one time.
- People buy from people
they like and trust, and web pages that enhance credibility and strengthen
trust in the web page visitor can aid usability i.e. do they feel comfortable
that you are who you say you are, and that they can purchase from your website.
Ways to Measure
‘Usability’
Your stats / analytics package
e.g. Google Analytics can give some indications of how usable your web pages
are. For example, if the average number of pages viewed and the average time
spent on the website (and certain important pages) are higher then this is could
be a good sign that some positive aspects of usability are in place. Lower ‘bounce
rates’ are also perceived to be a good sign (under 50% for a home page
and less for other internal pages). The figures showing the most popular pages
(and how these differ from the main entry pages) and the main exit pages can
also feed into usability information.
Some usability research
tries to distil and quantify many of the more subjective elements of usability
e.g. psychometric validation. For many of us though there are 3 other main ways
of refining our website usability:
- Asking other people to
use the website and give us their opinion. Often by organising our own style
of ‘focus group’ or by asking for regular opinions about the website
(e.g. using a link on the website) we can get some ides of where improvements
could be made.
- Changing things and seeing
how this affects the conversion rate is another popular way of reaching some
levels of understanding about website usability.
- Split A/B Testing i.e.
splitting 2 different versions of a web page to visitors to see which converts
the best is a possibility and can provide more guidance on usability for website
owners.
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