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We have seen sites that held all the right answers, but the navigation and messaging were so
bad we couldn’t get to the info – and ended up leaving. Hopefully, a frustrated customer picks
up the phone or emails you, but even still, a tone has been set – one that is ringing in their
ears. ROI of Usability:
Of course, any investment today will have to provide a positive ROI – management wants to
know what they are going to get in return for any project. Try to keep a straight face as you
tell a VP of Sales that you are going to give him a usable site. Better yet, watch his face
contort and his breathing becomes very measured. Whereas many companies are focused on immediate “A” leads (have budget, have
immediate need), building a ROI case can be difficult. Very few companies are actually
categorizing inquiries from the web site, turning “A” leads over to salespeople, nurturing “B”
and “C” leads over time and them tracking them as they enter a sales pipeline – without this
information, an investment into a marketing site can be hard to wrestle out of nervous
management teams. I am always amazed when companies tell me that they don’t really pay attention to the web
as a lead generation tool – they claim they get lots of frivolous inquiries, people who are just
looking and other miscellaneous emails. Every company should have business rules in place
to handle this aspect of marketing – especially when one customer can pay for a web site
over the course of his relationship with the company. In some cases, one sale from the web
can justify a new site, but this is a subject for an entire white paper of its own. With the right information, ROI cases can be built – but the key is getting that information.
Sadly, most companies don’t really have it. Costs of Usability Testing:
Another dark area – typically, most companies don’t spend enough time analyzing their web
sites for usability. Therefore once a design is approved (based on the web teams
consensus), it is full speed ahead into the development process. Leading usability experts believe that at least 10% of the project budget should be marked for
testing. This involves bringing the design to end-users (clients, vendors, etc.) and asking
them to do some testing on how they found the site to use. When time and money are mixed
together, most companies ignore this aspect and rely on themselves to determine usability.
Needles to say, most companies ignore this area all together. Who decides on usability?
There is no governing body that sits and meets on these issues and definitions, nor should
web teams decide based on their personal likes/dislikes. There are some usability experts
with many differing opinions, but usability should be looked at as a whole – not as an
individual. Usability is governed by the researched habits of users and a dash of common
sense. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get teams or people who don’t realize that the Internet has
grown up OR don’t use the Internet regularly to understand this important concept. We all
know that person who won’t/can’t agree on anything, but has the definitive idea on what the
site should look like. In some cases, it may be a peer, but in other cases it is a member of
senior management (or worse, a nephew of a senior management member who took a web
design course!) In our experience, companies in certain industries have extreme difficulties in understanding
the usability issue. They tend to look at the web very conservatively (as if usability was a
radical thought) and cling to design- and company-focused ideas. In many cases, these tend
to be the beliefs of owners and upper management who don’t think people are looking for
their particular products or services – but they aren’t good judges of how people really use
web sites. They want something that resembles what their biggest competitor has (if it was expensive it
must be good, right?) Often, they don’t even think that people are looking for them online. By
creating a web site that appeals to the web team, they think they are capturing the way the
vast majority of web users will use their site. And usually, they are too concerned with the
creative aspect – link colors, hidden rollovers and Flash intros. Dispelling some pesky myths:
To begin understanding how we approach usability, a few myths need to be discussed (you
will quickly see how they build on each other): - Myth 1: People will patiently read through endless paragraphs of text to find information.
Reality: People do not read on the Internet – they scan. And scan frantically
When first-time prospects hit a home page, they are not reading, they are scanning. They are
going to decide within 3 seconds if your company can help them. If they are repeat visitors,
they will have more patience, but not much more. On interior pages they will scan to find the
info THEY want, but they will not read through 5 paragraphs of text to get that info. - Myth 2: People randomly scan a home page.
Reality: Users consistently use home pages the same way.
According to the Stanford Poynter Project, visitors will start in the upper left (identifying where
they are), scan diagonally to the bottom right and then focus back on the middle of the page
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