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5 truths of website usability

It’s all about creating a website that enables the consumer to have a positive and productive experience. While there are a thousand rules, here are a few low hanging fruits:

1. Respect intuition

• Good web usability is rooted in intuitive design, both in layout of content and the user journey. As Steve Krug so appropriately phrased it; ‘Don’t make me think’. A user should not have to think about their journey. They have built up assumptions around typical website layouts in their subconscious mind from day to day surfing of the net. As soon as you start to go against these expectations you slow them down and they begin to have a poor experience of the site; and ultimately may leave for a competitor. A really obvious example of this is the location of the primary navigation. Don’t put this at the bottom or right hand side of the page – people will need to think and hunt for it. The same principle applies across the board.

2. Call a spade, a spade

• Users look for sign posts they recognise when browsing a site. Naming conventions should remain traditional and not make the user think about what you’re trying to say. You’ll win no points and certainly lose users and conversions if you start to get all creative and renaming content and links in creative ways. A spade should always be called a spade and not a ‘outdoor sculpting tool’. For example, title ‘Contact Us’ just that, not ‘Touch our minds’.

3. The I and the A must always come before the D

• Building Architects don’t start by deciding on which colour to paint the walls. They start with the structural framework. The same applies with website creation. The first step should always be to look at the architecture of the information and content for each page. Once this is agreed it can then be pushed to the Designers who can take the agreed IA and create an engaging visual interface for the user.

4. The golden triangle - the Monaco of digital real estate

• The Home Page of any website is prime digital real estate. The proverbial ‘penthouse’ of this real estate is the Golden Triangle: the top left hand corner the page, typically where the logo, tagline and ‘Home’ link of the page sits. If you were heat mapping a page it’s the first place a users eye falls when they browse the page. It’s also the default place the user will look to if they lose their way through the site or want to return to the home page (usually the back button is in this region and web standards define a click on the logo taking you back to the home page). Its VIP turf –value it accordingly. It should be the place where only the crème de la crème of content is called out.

5. A survey of one makes a website for one

• Your opinion is singular and subjective i.e. it’s your opinion alone and it can be very dangerous assuming you speak for the masses. It’s ok if you are personalising a site for your own specific use (i.e. iGoogle home page), but not good if the site is being designed for the mass market. You should always look to test your site across a cross section of potential users, as often as possible, and at as many stages as possible. You don’t need to spend a fortune doing this; you can use colleagues and friends – just make sure you get at least 5-10 different opinions. Most will differ from your own.