What is website usability?
As a design firm, we spend a lot of time designing websites that are, first and foremost, apathy killers, in order to interrupt the set thought patterns of customers. If we can’t get and keep their attention, all the website usability in the world is for nothing.
Usability can run counter to design. Usability is about being conventional, or putting items where people expect to find them. Steve Krug, in his excellent book Don’t Make Me Think, asserts that a good web experience “takes advantage of conventions”. The dichotomy of a website remains: usability gives visitors what they expect, while branded design gives visitors what they don’t expect.
How do you solve this dilemma? Krug says that a positive web experience includes a “clear visual hierarchy“ on every page, starting with the home page. In other words, identify what is important and make it look important. This is the crossroads where design and usability meet. This also follows the Genius Simple Branding™ approach, in which your aim is to identify and simplify what is outstanding about your brand and offer it to a special crowd of people. In most cases, this means only one to three clickable paths are prioritized and featured. These paths should be attention-getting apathy killers. Your other content and utilities can live conventional lives in button bars, tabs or text navigation.
How do you know if your site is conventional enough for visitors to easily navigate? Krug encourages frequent informal testing, yet he warns: “The only problem is, there is no average user. In fact, all of the time I’ve spent watching people use the web has led me to the opposite conclusion: All Web users are unique, and all web use is basically idiosyncratic.“ He concludes that it is best to approach website usability testing in a balanced, well-thought-out and informal manner – much preferred to skipping it altogether due to lack of time and money.
Some usability experts mandate that visitors be able to easily find what they want on your site. They argue that if your site is difficult, users will get frustrated and leave with the impression that your company is not credible or queued into its customers. You don’t want a site that is hard to navigate. However, the question arises:
Do you always want people to find what they want on your site?
- If you are Wikipedia or a large knowledge base, the answer is yes because you are in the business of providing answers and relevant information.
- If you are selling a service, a product, or intellectual property, the answer should lean toward NO. Your website is definitely not the place to spill all of your candy. Why? If visitors go to your site and take the information (or gadgets) and run, you have lost the opportunity to develop a long-term customer relationship.
Brand well and prosper!
Andy Cleary