Articles
[18/12/2009] What is usability?
You created a website for your company using the services of a web design-London company. You shelled out a lot of money in this venture and going one step further, you made use of a lot of promotional strategies to attract visitors to your website. However, one fine day, you decided to use your website to buy your product and realized that it was fairly difficult to find information or to move between pages. This is when you decided to think about how easily usable is your website for your visitors. Usability is making the website as easy and simple to use, with all the right information easily located in the right places so that visitors and the company are profited.An easy to use website should first and foremost have all the information in the right places. That means all that desire the visitor to see, learn and make use of should have a structure. Information should be divided into clear sections such as the page that informs them about the company, the reason for its being, the founders, the vision and mission and perhaps information on the teams. Another page could inform the visitors on why the company exists; the services and products offered by the company with detailed information on each along with pictures. Next would be the page that allows them to make a purchase. You can also include a page giving information on contacting you and a page that allows visitors to become members. All these pages should have a flow and should be properly linked. It is also necessary to make sure that all the components are working. For example, the payment gateway should be properly functioning. Otherwise, visitors will not be able to make a purchase.
The products and services offered must be presented in such a manner that the visitors can easily find them. The website loads on to the home page. Visitors should be able to move to the pages that meet their requirements from the home page. Hence the different pages must be linked together. For example, a customer wishing to purchase tickets to a flight must be able to make the choice of the flight with all the necessary information already given and then proceed to payment. In the absence of links, there will be no closure on this deal and visitors will quickly make a bee-line to other companies.
Any web design company worth its salt will know how important the design of the website is to the client and the customer. The look and feel and use of objects such as icons make a website immensely appealing and easy to use.
The content used to present the website must be easily understood by one and all. Keep it simple and sweet is a very useful technique that must be adapted. This makes the difference between a profitable web business and that is still questioning its methods.
Simple tests can be performed on the website to determine its usability. One can also use statistics to determine the ease of use, the number of visitors, their frequency and the time spent by them on your website. All this is a precursor to determine how user friendly your website is.
