So How Useable Is Your Site?

Let's face it, any business that is serious about getting sales or leads from their website will spend a lot of time and money in raising it's profile. They'll be making sure that the website is Search Engine Friendly and that they are making the best use of the browser 'real estate'. They will be getting links to the site by the bucket load and making sure that there 'voice' is heard in the Social Media arena too.

All this adds up to one hell of a lot of effort (and money) and done properly will result in traffic to a site. But what happens then, do users like what they see, can they find what you want them to find? These are very important questions and they need to be answered not by you (or your web site's designers) but by your audience, your potential customers...

Of course there is a lot of research and questions that you can answer for yourself too, three of the greatest books on this subject being:-

'The Big Red Fez' by Seth Godin - ISBN 0-7432-2086-2
'Prioritizing Web Usability' by Jakob Neilson & Hoa Loranger - ISBN 0-321-35031-6
and
'Don't Make Me Think' by Steve Krugg - ISBN 0-321-34475-8

Reading any of these will really help you understand the area of web site usability in greater depth, but you will still be missing one vital component, that of what real visitors think of your site, not friends or business colleagues, but people who have never heard of you and have never seen your site before...

This is where independant user testing comes in and it can be a real eye opener, telling you that even though you thought that it was perfectly simply to find can openers on your site, that in reality for your potential customers it was dam hard.

Such insights come up far more often than you would have thought...

There are many companies that offer website usability testing, but one of the best I have come across is 'WhatUsersDo.com'. Their costs are good too, starting at just £25!! If you are interested you can also follow them on Twitter , it could be some time and money VERY well spent.

So if you have spend a lot of time and money getting traffic to your site, be sure to check that it is usable and that people can do 'what you want them to do' - More on that bit another day...