On Web Site Usability
by Randall McCarley
September 23rd, 2006
Occasionally I will ramble about usability on this blog. This is because it is critical to a web site’s success.
So what is web site usability? There are many opinions. In the context of 14th Colony usability means:
1. Design that creates an equal experience for all viewers supporting them to make appropriate actions intuitively.
2. Web design that gets the design out of the user’s way.
The first definition has a lot to do with accessibility, which is making sure every visitor can access and use your site comfortably regardless of any physical limitations. For example, some people may have bad eyes and increase the default font size. Most web sites fall apart when that happens. Or other people who can’t see at all use audio browsers that read the web site contents out loud to the viewer! Target didn’t pay attention to accessibility and has suffered the consequences through court decisions and bad publicity.
Supporting a viewer to take appropriate actions can be tough. Whole books are dedicated to making this happen through copywriting, psychology, design and more. Mostly I consider this a design issue. If a page offers too many choices the viewer is likely to overload and do nothing. How the page is laid out makes a big difference in the path your customer chooses. And how the page is designed determines if any choices the viewer makes are intuitive or not.
The second definition applies to intuitive web design. Intuitive design is very difficult to achieve and extremely powerful. Intuitive design determines whether a viewer clicks through a web site with confidence or if they have to figure it out as they go along.
Put another way, intuitive web design is so obvious and easy to use the design isn’t even noticed!
A well-framed picture makes people comment on qualities of the picture - not the framing. A web site should operate the same way. The site needs to have enough color, line, shape and texture to guide the viewer and achieve the desired results but anything beyond that is clutter. And clutter stops sales.
To determine if your site is intuitive ask yourself this: Whose ego is served: you, the designer or the customer?
Next Article: New stuff coming: YA Redesign Previous Article: Client Praise: Success!