Why is Web Usability Important?

Not only is web usability important, it’s vital. In a competitive world of big-name brands and corporations fighting for the same space, you can’t simply launch a site and trust it will engage your audience. Developing your site from the ground up with the user in mind will increase the chances of conversion and gaining yourself a loyal customer base. I recently listened to a seminar on web usability by Thanh Nguyen with the Online Marketing Institute. She highlighted some common usability mistakes that could hurt the chances of audience engagement. Could your site be guilty of any of these sins?

1. Don’t make your site look like a used car salesman’s closet. This includes gratuitous use of frames, flashy content or glittery graphics.
2. Don’t misuse the principal of proximity. Two pieces of unrelated content should be kept apart from each other on the page. The ad for donuts shouldn’t be placed next to an article about weight loss surgery – or should it?
3. Don’t misuse the principle of color. Things that share the same color are perceived to be grouped together. We scan items from large to small, irregular shapes to regular ones, dark colors to light, saturated colors to less saturated. Make it easy for your users to find the content they want.
4. Create a clear starting point and exit point. I know you’re thinking “exit point, I don’t want them to leave the site.”  What this means is, provide a way for the user to connect with you before you loose them, like a contact us link at the end of the page.  Make a clear path for the user.
5. Lines to separate content. Place some breaks in content to allow our eyes to scan effectively.
6. Divide information into five to nine meaningful chunks. There’s a rule that our brains retain more information in groupings of seven. When you take seven and add or subtract two, you have five and nine. Grouping things in this way allows for maximum retention. For instance, a page with a navigation, a large graphic, a header and three stories lined up vertically above the fold represents six visual chunks of information. This should prove to be easier to read and scan.
7. Denote what is clickable and what isn’t and make the links easy to find.
8. Save data in forms when the user hits the back button. How many times have you wanted to buy that pair of purple, $400 shoes, put it in the shopping cart and then realized you also want black? I know, it happens to me all the time, too. Just be conscious of how you may be loosing some of your user’s cart contents, and sales, by not fixing this.
9. Allow users to control their own experience. Don’t force your customers to have to click the close button 10 times just to get to the page they want, and auto-play video and audio can be pretty inconvenient in mixed company.
10. User testing. Just do it.