Mind on Marketing

You’ve done a great job of driving people to your site using Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, etc. Now what? Once they get there, you’ve only got a few seconds before they decide to stay or move on. With hundreds of millions of sites, your users have a lot of options, and limited time. If they can’t figure out how to use your site, can’t  find what you’ve led them to expect is there, or are turned off by what they see–they’re gone!

Keeping people engaged with your site is easier if you know the fundamental usability guidelines for what makes most sites easy to use and interesting. But first, what is usability? Once again, I turn to Jakob Nielsen (with some paraphrasing), who defines six important quality components of usability:

Learnability–how easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter your web site?

Efficiency: Once users have learned the structure/design of your site, how quickly can they perform tasks?

Memorability: When users return to your site after a period of not using it, how easily can they get good at using it again?

Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?

Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Utility: Does the way your site works meet users’ needs?

Why Usability Matters

If your site is hard to use, people leave. When people arrive at your home page, they must be able to tell, at a glance, who you are, what your business is, and what’s available on your site.  It has to be easy for them to figure out your navigation scheme that makes your site content and functionality available to them.  Your copy must be clear, concise, coherent and scannable. If you have a shopping cart, transactions must take place seamlessly and according to expectations.

If you’re taking the time to create and maintain a credible web site, it’s worth the extra time to learn about and apply usability to your site, too.

The Usability Rule of Thumb

Reduced to simplest terms, usability rests on following the best practices of other sites on the web. There are web usability conventions that you can apply without doing research and testing. For example:

1. Put your main navigation links across the top of your page, or at one side. If your site is large enough to consist of many pages and three or more levels of depth, put your subsidiary/local links on one side of the page.

2. Place your name and logo at the top left of the page, and on sub-pages, link it to your home page.

3. Put your tag line at the top of every page

4. Include Contact information as a global link.

5. Break your text up with boldface subheads, bullet items, and numbered lists

When to Assess Usability

Most businesses do usability review and analysis when they are overhauling their current web site or getting ready to launch a new site. User testing is a valuable activity during this phase. Users can provide feedback on what does and doesn’t work on the current site. You can do paper prototypes or wireframes for your new site, before you actually build it out, and ask users to test the prototype and provide feedback.

User testing tells you how easy your site is to use

If you aren’t sure how easy it is to use your site, ask a few people who are representative of your customers and prospects. Five people are enough to give you reliable results. Find a quiet conference room and invite one person to sit at a computer and use your site. Resist the urge to explain the site, coach them on what to do next, or defend anything they find difficult. Just ask them to use the site and narrate what they are thinking as they do so. Take notes on what they have difficulty with, what works well, what relevant thoughts they articulate. You’ll be amazed at what you learn!

Conclusion: Usability is what makes your site worth visiting after you have taken the time and trouble to drive people to your site.

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