What You’ve Got To Know About Improving Website Usability

The term, website usability, has been known for quite a few years, and yet it is something that appears to be hardly discussed in the more heavily trafficked marketing forums. We find that just incredible because it really is talking about optimization of all elements of a commercial site. If your site is not very “usable,” then basically people will not want to use it – which means stay there, or return – meaning not very sticky. We all want our visitors and readers to return to our sites. You must have a clear picture of what your visitors are doing once they land on your website.

There is basically one approach to monitoring our visitors, and that is through a good tracking program. The basic strategy is to discover where your website is under-performing; once done, you examine the location and begin creating adjustments. But although that is a fairly crude approach, there really isn’t much more we can do. Many tracking scripts are extremely simple, and of course you can use something highly effective like Google Analytics. They generally do the same things, and then it boils down to features and benefits. You will need to know the how, where and when of traffic flow in addition to time spent on each page. We think it is worth it to use a superior quality script so you can have a better idea about your site.

When you engage in the overall process of increasing site usability, you are optimizing. All businesses on the web want the highest conversion rates regardless of what is truly being converted. When you are prepared to make modifications on your site, then you need to perform testing. There are advanced testing processes, but the most common is A/B split testing on your pages. Split testing is the simplest and easier than Taguchi multivariate testing. Where you begin and what you test is your decision, and there are standard items that people tend to test, too. If you believe you have seen a page having issues, then you should start testing on that particular page. The sensible approach to optimization and testing is to discover where your site is weak so you can correct it.

There is no question about the worth of testing and usability performance evaluation. However, the long term results will be worth the time and hassle to do it. When your website is fully optimized, your desired conversions will be the very best they can be. We all know what the bottom line is, and that’s the whole reason for doing this.