The Archives

Website usability is a term used to indicate the ease with which people can interact with a website. You don’t have to be expert website architect to understand there is a low tolerance for difficult designs and slow websites. People don’t want to wait. They want it easy. They want it fast.

Users must be able to use your website without even thinking. The internet is overloaded with information and a user is presented with a plethora of choices before they even reach your website. When a user chooses to click on a link that leads to your website (from a search result or other site), they will land on one of your website pages and it must engage them – quickly.

Website architects go by the general rule of thumb that a website has 3 to 5 seconds to engage the attention of a user. For this reason, a website must address a user’s need immediately. In short, does the website provide a solution to the user’s problem? Your website must answer this question without making people think.

For example, if a user is shopping for Pandora Beads for their bracelet and they land on your website, can they quickly identify that you indeed sell Pandora Jewelry? One way to capture a person’s attention is by making sure these keywords (graphical or text) are in the header, navigation, and content of your site.

In the context of engaging a user’s attention, the term “keyword” is a word or phrase the user can use to validate that your website is about what they want. Is your value proposition in the header (Largest Selection of Pandora Beads and Jewelry)? Can users quickly identify keywords in your navigation (Sterling Silver Pandora Beads, Most Popular Pandora Beads)? Are there keywords in the content (page title, sub title, and text)? If you use keywords correctly, users will click to other pages within your website.

After a user clicks to another page, another question arises: Is this website credible? As a user navigates through your website, their anxiety may begin to build as they look for indicators that tell them if they should be doing business with you. How long have you been in business? What are other customers saying about you? Providing a sense of credibility will reduce the user’s anxiety and increase your chances of earning their trust.

After you have accomplished the goal of engaging the user’s attention and have earned their trust, consider the following five questions.

1. How easy is it for users to accomplish a task the first time they visit the website?
2. How quickly can they perform tasks?
3. When users return to the site after one month, how easily can they relearn how to use it?
4. How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
5. How pleasant is the site to use?

The information stated within this article provides questions you can ask to help make your website engaging, credible, learnable, efficient, memorable, and satisfying for people to experience. In a word: usable.

Website user experience is the personal encounter a person has with your website. When a user visits your website, you have the opportunity to influence their behavior and perceptions. Influencing a users experience requires a deep understanding of who that person is and what they want to accomplish.

When you architect website structure, understanding is a discovery and defining process that involves the following.

1. Defining user groups
2. Conducting research
3. Creating personas
4. Defining user requirements

Defining User Groups

User groups describe who will use the website. Will the users be potential customers, current customers, potential employees, investors, partners, donors, and/or members? This is a brainstorming step that helps generally define and prioritize groups so you know where to focus your research when you architect website structure

Conducting Research

You’ll have to decide what user group you want to focus on when conducting your research. For example, you might want to focus your efforts on the user groups that will make the company the most money. If that’s the case, then you’ll want to discover who your potential customers are and how they behave. This can be accomplished by interviewing stakeholders involved with the project, employees who deal with customers, current customers, surveys, and emails.

Creating Personas

A persona is a detailed description of a fictional person within a user group who might use your website. Personas describe a person. Where do they live? What’s the climate like? How do they live? What are their beliefs? What is their personality like? What do they want? How do they interact with you and your competitors?

Answering these questions before you architect website structure helps shape a fictional character that will serve as a guide when creating a valuable website user experience.

Defining User Requirements

User requirements are statements about what personas want to accomplish on your website. What will the users do? How will they navigate through your website? What content are they looking for? How will they interact?  The goal is to solidify what website functions and features will be necessary in order to provide a user-centered experience. By stating user requirements that align with user needs, your website will accomplish the task of influencing the user’s perceptions and behaviors.

Keeping user experience in mind when you architect website structure through defining user groups, conducting research, creating personas, and defining user requirements will allow you to influence the behavior and perceptions of users, which will automatically lead to a successful website that accomplishes all of its goals.