Usability

What is usability?

Usability is about making your website easy to use. It's important your website is clear, obvious and simple to understand. Visitors to your site want to find what they're looking for without having to think about it.

Why is usability important?

A site that is easy to use greatly improves your users' experience. If users find your site difficult to use, they will become frustrated and leave.

Bad designs

Many sites on the web are not very usable. Some common problems are:

• Confusion because the site doesn't clearly explain what it is about
• Long loading times because of overuse of large graphics, Java applets, ad banners, and other flashy elements
• Inconvenience because the site requires plug-ins to be installed
• Difficult navigation because the controls are hard to find, poorly labelled, or because there are too many links
• Overly complicated navigation rather than standard conventions
• Poor readability

Clean design

Clean design can make pages more pleasant to look at and easier to use. You don't need to be an expert graphic designer to create well-designed pages.

• Avoid unnecessary elements (graphics or text that isn't relevant)
• Avoid distractions (animated GIFs, striking colours, etc.) that don't have a clear purpose
• Avoid techniques you don't understand (e.g. if you are not confident about your colour design skills, stick to basic colours based around black on white)
• Arrange the page into visual areas (title, content, navigation, references, etc.) and stick to that template

Usability testing

If you really want to know that your website works, you've got to test it. A good way to start is to find around 5 people. Watch them navigate and attempt tasks as they think their actions out loud. If more than one tester can't do or find something, you have identified a problem. Remember, it's not the users' fault if they have trouble; it's a problem with your site. Look out for the following:

• Do users pick the correct navigation options first time? If not, the choices may not be sufficiently clear
• Do they need to spend a long time considering navigation choices? If so, there may be too many options
• Do users need to go through many screens to reach their destination? If so, you may need to provide useful shortcuts
• If the information users want is not available on the site, do they discover this quickly?
• Do they struggle to read text?

A usability testing discussion guide is on this site. You can download it and edit it for your own use.