Usablility

I did some research on Usability so that I could understand it more. I came across a web page by Jakob Nielsen who defines usability as " Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process."

Usability gives a great advantage to businesses as if a person can use their site easily then it can be an effective way to increase sales, and increase customer satisfaction. I found out that a lot people would abandon their shopping basket when shopping online. A lot of people do this because the shopping process or payment process becomes to complicated so the person just leaves the website, which means revenue is lost for the company. Usability testing can help see what the problems are with this and sort them out.

Jakob Nielson also says that:

Usability is defined by five quality components:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
• 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?

By insuring that your have all these components in place then your website should keep people coming back to your site and staying longer on it. So basically if a website is not easy to use, if your website does not state what you offer or if your information is not easy to read then a person will leave your website which would mean a loss of revenue for your business.

A heat map is used in usability testing and I think it is an excellent way to watch what your visitors do. By using this you can clearly see the different pages that your visitors click. This will show you which pages in your site are more popular. One of the most popular heat maps that seems to be out there is from crazy egg.

Overall all I think all businesses should consider web usability. Even though it may cost a lot of money to begin with businesses will end up benefiting a lot more than if they do not use web usability.