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Web usability: The basics

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19 Apr 20043 min read 32.6K   10   2
The basics of web usability.

What is web usability & why is it important?

Web usability is about making your website in such a way that your site users can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently. A usable website can reap huge benefits on to your website and your business.

  • Every £1 invested in making your website easy-to-use returns £10 to £100 (source: IBM)
  • A usability redesign can increase the sales/conversion rate by 100% (source: Jakob Nielson)

Your website has to be easy to navigate

Users have gradually become accustomed to particular layouts and phrases on the Internet, for example:

  • Organization logo is in the top-left corner and links back to the homepage.
  • The term 'About us' is used for organization information.
  • Navigation is in the same place on each page and adjacent to the content.
  • Anything flashing or placed above the top logo is often an advertisement.
  • The term 'Shopping cart' is used for items you might wish to purchase.

There are numerous other conventions like these - can you think of some more?

Don't underestimate the importance of these conventions - as the Internet matures, we're getting more and more used to things being a certain way. Break these conventions and you may be left with nothing but a handful of dissatisfied site visitors.

Pages must download quickly

Studies have shown that 8.6 seconds is the maximum time web users will wait for a page to download (source: Andrew B. King - Speed Up Your Site). As of mid-2003, just 17% of UK web users had broadband, so it's essential that your website downloads quickly on a dial-up modem.

To speed up the download time of your website, we recommend you do three things:

  1. Use CSS and not tables to lay out your web page
  2. Use CSS [Cascading StyleSheets] and not images to create fancy navigation items
  3. Read this article about how to speed up the download time of your web pages

Information should be easy to retrieve

We read web pages in a different manner to the way we read printed matter. We generally don't read pages word-for-word - instead we scan. When we scan web pages, certain items stand out:

  • Headings
  • Link text
  • Bold text
  • Bulleted lists

Did you notice that images were left out of that list? Contrary to the way in which we read printed matter, we see text before we see images on the Internet. Don't place important information in images as it might go unnoticed.

Restrictions must not be placed on users

Don't prevent your users from navigating through the Internet in the way that they want to. For example:

  1. Every time a link is opened in a new window the back button is disabled. Approximately, 60% of Web users employ the back button as their primary means of navigation. If you do this, then you're preventing 60% of your users from using their primary navigation - now, that can't be good.
  2. Don't use frames to lay out your website. Frames can cause a number of usability problems, namely:
    • Disabling the back button (see above)
    • Bookmarking not possible
    • Impossible to e-mail the link to someone else
    • Problems with printing
    • Users feel trapped if external links open in the same window
    • Search engine optimization issues

There are lots of other ways that websites can place restrictions on its users - can you think of any more? Just think back to the last time a website really infuriated you - what annoying thing did it do to make you feel that way?

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

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Written By
Web Developer
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Trenton Moss is crazy about usability and accessibility - so crazy that he founded Webcredible, an industry leading user experience consultancy, to help make the Internet a better place for everyone. He's very good at information architecture and interaction design.

Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralThe sky is not falling, will not fall any time soon Pin
NGS 54967220-Apr-04 5:28
NGS 54967220-Apr-04 5:28 
Well, the idea has some merit, like making your Windows apps look like windows apps if they are destined for wide customer base usage, but that is only a nice, normally applicable GUIDELINE. Microsoft Windows Media Player doesn't completely comply with that Microsoft promoted guideline and no one is complaining, even though it is sometimes difficult to get it to do the most obvious of features easily.
Truth is, there are probably more non-conformist web sites that conformist. While serfers (not a misspell) have grown accustomed to some conventions, no one is expecting, nor will they discover, that the web will begin to follow the concept of this article any time soon. Again, truth is that users expect the web to offer diverse and creative presentations.
However, we have all visited sites that just refuse to yield up their information because they were designed by a lunatic idiot management team instead of one of us brilliant engineer types... but that's a different discussion.
Last point: usability is key. Intuitive interfaces are always better than the alternative. How intuitive is interpreted is the real issue.
Now, the way I do it is perfect...

Know'sItAll
GeneralA few points Pin
Mark Focas19-Apr-04 20:47
Mark Focas19-Apr-04 20:47 

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