Recently I read an interesting bit of research conducted by E-consultancy which grabbed my attention. I was about the growth of the UK usability market. According to these guys the UK usability market will be worth more than £200 million by the end of 2008. It is undeniable that the usability market has seen great growth in recent years and if this estimation is accurate then why are there still some site owners who blindly ignore usability?

As I trawl through websites all day long tutting and tisking at user-unfriendly sites it continually puzzles me as a budding SEO executive how some sites can get it so wrong! Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of usability and the abundance of fantastic work in this area (especially that by Jakob Neilsen the “usability guru”) many people still don’t seem to “get” the importance of usability.

But what is there not to get? If a site isn’t user-friendly people won’t use it and they will leave, most likely never to return. Internet users are a fickle bunch. But then why shouldn’t we be? If one site proved difficult to use in our attempt to retrieve certain information then we know there are many other sites out there from which we can gain the required information.

However, it is encouraging to see that this usability market value estimation predicts more and more businesses are embracing usability as a necessity rather than a luxury. At the end of the day, lack of site usability can have a negative impact on profit margins for many companies.

When working closely with a website it is often difficult to notice niggling usability issues. This is where usability testing comes in. Usability testing is an effective way to identify issues visitors experience when using a site. It involves asking independent users to complete set tasks on the site and monitoring them to see how they use the site to accomplish these tasks. User feedback is extremely important to identify what they found good / bad / ugly whilst moving around the site.

Take a quick look over our top tips below for assessing a site’s usability. This is by no means a fully exhaustive list but it gives a good idea of what should be considered within web design.

Conform to user convention. This includes keeping layout and navigation consistent throughout the site. Users expect the navigation to be positioned at the top of the page or down the left hand side. If this is what your site visitors expect don’t deliberately confuse them by positioning your navigation elsewhere. Users also expect to find a company logo to the top left side of the page, preferably one that is clickable and directs them back to the home page.

Break text up into manageable chunks. Use bullet points. Bold out important words / phrases. Use headings and subheadings. Keep paragraphs short. Keep language simple, no jargon! For more information about how we read on the web and tips on how to write for the web check out Lazy Eyes a great article by Michael Agger.

Font size is also really important. Anything under 10pt is too small for reading on a computer screen. Anything smaller than this and visitors are unlikely to stick around straining their eyes trying to read your content, no matter how useful / insightful / amazing it is. Also vary font size throughout the copy, for example, make headings larger than the rest of the text.

Make hypertext links stand out. Traditionally, convention has been to show hypertext links in blue. However, current convention is to show hypertext links in any colour as long as they stand out from the rest of the copy. According to Agger, links embedded in the copy give a text more authority, making visitors more likely to hang around.

Make it obvious what page the visitor is on. Search engine friendly page titles including relevant keywords for the page are not only helpful to the search engines, but also visitors. A visitor will only stick around if they think the page content includes the information they are looking for.

Incorporate a breadcrumb trail into the site. Breadcrumb trails are very good for usability as they provide visitors with a sense of place on the site. Breadcrumb trails offer one-click access to higher site pages so visitors can see the navigational path they took to get to a desired page. Thanks to a breadcrumb trail visitors can see where they are on a site, how they got there and how they can get back.

If there is a search facility on the site make sure it can handle misspellings, hyphens, plurals and other variants of search query terms. A good search facility is fundamental to the visitor’s experience on your site, especially as it provides a life line if the visitor fails to use the navigation to move around the site.

Keep page download times to a minimum. In an interview with E-consultancy Jakob Neilsen recommends that page download times be kept under one second for smooth navigation throughout the site. Anything between one and 10 seconds is the limit of most web users’ attention. Anything over 10 seconds and people are likely to become impatient. See Google Likes a Quickie – a great article by a fellow frogger about page download times and how we can cut down on frustrating slow loading pages!

For ecommerce sites, it is essential that your checkout process is simple and confusion free. For a detailed analysis of checkout usability issues please take time to look at Checkout Usability.

Sometimes it is just a few simple tweaks to make a site more user-friendly, sometimes it requires a little more work. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that usability is an area that simply must not be ignored. Site owners take heed…us web users are not very forgiving, you burn us once with a badly behaving site and we will not return. If your site cannot help us out, your competitors’ just might…

I have just had a really good read through Stoney’s 19 steps for a quickie usability review (titled “The 19-Hour Website Analysis, in 20 Minutes or Less”) and i think its great!

Stoney provides an excellent list of many usability issues that you should look out for when conducting a review of your website. It is often the case that possible website usability problems are overlooked or simply not identified so this is a great checklist of things to check your site for.

A comprehensive list that I’ll be getting all the other Froggers to read!

Just wanted to share a great article covering 30 Usability issues that you should be aware of.

It provides a great introduction to usability as well as providing some interesting psychological reasoning and priniciples to explain these issues. A good read.

(Example: 800×600) smallest

(Example: 1280×1024) High Resolution
OK, so you have a great site, have lots to say, are an expert in your field and your site also looks great in 1280×1024. But, you have just found out that people are still using 800×600 and these people can only view 419px area above scroll, so are seeing barely half of your fantastic new site. What do you do?………..

Well Jakob Nielson has been debating this very issue since 1994 and in Neilsons words “most findings about Web usability are the same now as they were in 1994.This may be surprising, but usability is about basic human capabilities and users’ needs which do not change nearly as rapidly as technology.”

Scrolling: it seems everyone has an opinion on it:

“Re-design for 800×600, you’ll regret it if you don’t!”

“Don’t worry about it; most people are on 1280x1024”

“Make sure that your calls to action are above the fold”

“What’s the fold?”

In my opinion, designing for 800×600 would not be designing for the majority of users. I don’t for one minute consider that those using 800×600 are inconsequential, I just believe that a compromise is probably better in this case. The percentages of those on high and low resolution is still in some contest, some will argue that its 7% on 800×600 others 14% leaving the majority with a fairly significant share, but it is something that should be factored in when considering copy placement and positioning of a companies USP at the very least.

According to the research by Click Tale total page length is not a strong factor in terms of how many people will scroll below the fold or reach the bottom of page. Their analysis has shown that:

* The average location for the fold is between 430 and 860 pixels down on the page.
* 76% of people will scroll below the fold.
* 91% of pages are long enough to require scrolling.

You have to keep in mind that behind these percentages lie actual individuals, and user behavior is split between certain groups of individuals that make up the Web Population i.e.: Methodicals and Humanistics these are users driven by information gathering and will most likely scroll in order to find what they need, their opposites are the Spontaneous and Competitive types who make up, probably the majority of site bounce ratios, these users are far more fickle and indecisive, and therefore need to access information easily and quickly. Considering the brain can absorb thousands upon thousands bits of information per second…10 seconds is long enough to get your message across.

So basically to round up, here’s a short checklist of things that might help to avoid bounce rates due to scrolling:

1. Communicate your USP, biggest benefits in headlines and calls to action above the fold (Users often decide whether to stay or leave based on what they can see without scrolling)
2. Include well-formatted web copy to aid scrolling
3. Don’t sacrifice clear page design to shave a few pixels off the page length
4. Don’t even consider horizontal scrolling
5. Remember the 10 second rule
6. Add a bookmark button at the top of the page (to encourage them to return)

Of course for more information on usability visit the Jakob Nielson site.

A checkout process on an e-commerce site is key to the site’s success in converting visitors into online sales. Your site may be attracting targeted visitors that want to buy online but your complicated or frustrating checkout means that they give up (and in many cases, are unlikely to return.) This indicates how important it is to get your checkout right

I tend to come across many more sites that have frustrating and long winded checkout processes than I do checkout’s that are usable, simple and safe. And this is exactly how people want to buy online, with simplicity and security.

So I thought I would brainstorm what I think should be included in your checkout and where it should be included in order to make the process as stress free for everyone.

Firstly, make it obvious that your checkout procedure is secure and that any extra costs (e.g. delivery costs) are made obvious early on in the process. Potential customers will want to want to feel secure and informed, and any extra processes or ‘noise’ within this process is likely to affect your conversion rate of visitor into sale. It may also be an idea to have a clear link on every page of the site that allows customers to “view basket” and “view delivery info”.

Product
· Price – make the cost of items and products clearly visible
· Options – make sure that users can choose colours/ sizes of products here so that the desired final product is added to the basket
· Availability – If the product is not available, it should say so at this stage. It would be irritating for a customer to go through the checkout process only to find that the product they want is not available
· Call to action – place a call to action to prompt people to “Buy online now!”

Basket
· Add to basket – Take the customer to the basket when a customer clicks “add to basket”. This means that customers can clearly seethe contents of the basket. Remember to place an obvious link back to the product page that the customer came from.
· Editing the basket – Make editing the shopping basket simple and easy. For example, make it possible for customers to delete individual items from their basket. (I have recently come across a site that only allowed me to empty the whole basket.) It should be here that customers have the option to either “continue shopping” or “proceed to checkout”

Checkout
· Security – once customers proceed through the checkout, be sure your isolate again that your checkout is secure.
· Review – allow customers to review what they are paying for. All delivery or shipping costs should have been mentioned by this step.
· Login or register? – I personally find it annoying having to register with a site in order to complete an online sale. However should you require that customers register, you should do so here.
· Payment – customers should then add their payment and shipping details.
· Thank you – a thank you page should summarise the order, summarise the payment, provide reference numbers and include information about how to print the confirmation page etc.

Image: http://www.wakefield.gov.uk/CultureAndLeisure/Museums/ToysAndGames/till.htm?wbc_purpose=…default.htmdefault.htm