A high quality user experience has a huge impact on sales generation and on the overall success of a website. Visitors should find information, calls to action and user journeys totally intuitive. The classic rule of usability is “don’t make me (the user) think”.
You have under a minute to communicate to a first time visitor to your website. If a page does not communicate quickly and clearly, the visitor will go elsewhere and is unlikely to return. Most visitors do not even bother scrolling down the page.
Usability impact
The difference in sales generated between great usability and poor can be enormous. Our research has shown several cases, involving high profile websites, where improved user journeys resulted in 4 - 5 times increase in sales.
Audience
A website must be tailored specifically to its audience. The biggest challenge a website manager faces is understanding that audience. The technical aspects of how content management systems or search engines work are secondary.
There are a large number of videos on YouTube talking about usability. Below is one from Elavision which we like.
Usability definition
“Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.” (Neilsen)
Seamless integration
In order to achieve high-quality website user experience, there must be seamless integration of multiple disciplines, including marketing, communications, design, information architecture and usability testing.
Design and usability
A well designed site is not only visually pleasing, but provides an easy to navigate interface, providing the information to enable a visitor complete specific tasks, for example, buying books or reading news online.
Design evolution
No website is perfect and business websites change and evolve as new products and services are added. Visitor behaviour also evolves, depending on age, experience, interests, changing expectations and other external influences.
Task completion
Website owners expand a great deal of time and effort making the website easy to use. Unfortunately, visitors often encounter unexpected problems resulting in lower sales, missed information and lost customers. Many of these problems could have been identified and resolved by proper usability testing.
User journeys
To meet the needs of the users, making task completion must be the primary objective. Establishing these tasks and then establishing the “User Journey” to complete these task is vital aspect of usability, for example, subscribing to a magazine or purchasing items online.
The user journey maps out the path a typical user might take to complete specific tasks. To optimise the efforts of design, information architecture and user journeys, usability testing must be carried out as a fundamental component of website creation.
Usability testing
The goal of usability testing is to identify usability problems, to collect performance information (e.g., task completion time, error rates), as well as to determine website satisfaction levels.
If a website is difficult to navigate or does not quickly, clearly and coherently define its purpose, users leave. Ensuring visitors remain, makes usability testing of websites a key task.
Ideally, usability testing is done before a website launches, then in beta mode before launch to allow final refinements. Usability testing should be an ongoing component of a businesses online strategy.
Testing is carried out every time a visitor submits feedback, for example, in emails, feedback forms, tweets and blogs. This feedback information must be monitored and acted upon as it may highlight areas requiring refinement, improvement or previously unidentified bottlenecks.
Usability testing baseline
The results of the first test will act as a baseline against which the impact of changes to the website can be measured. Usability testing reveals:
- Learnability: How easy is it for users to complete tasks the first time they visit the website?
- Efficiency: How much time and how many steps were required to complete tasks? (For example, buying an item or completing a subscription)
- Recall: When users return to the website after a period. Does the returning user remember how to complete the task effectively, or does the user have to relearn the process?
- Accuracy/Errors: How many errors did the user make? How severe were these errors? Were the users able to recover from the errors with the right information?
- Satisfaction: How much does the user like using the system? Does the user feel pressurised or stresse by the experience? Would the user recommend the system to a friend?
Plenty to think about. If you would like more information about website usability then click on the link to contact us
