The Importance of Usability in Web Page Design

Usability is one of the most important factors in the success of any web page design. It’s all about making your primary and secondary objectives blindingly simple! This includes making content easy to find and giving users everything they want. With a good web page design, a user should not have to stop and think, i.e., the next step should always be obvious to them.

According to market research from Gartner Group, 50% plus of online sales are lost because visitors can’t find what they are looking for!

Usability is especially critical in an e-commerce web site. The first law of e-commerce states:

“If the customer cannot find the product, then the customer cannot buy the product."

If your conversion rate success metric is low then your web page design usability is often the culprit.

The easier it is for customers to find what they are looking for the more they will buy or enquire. Too often web sites focus on looking attractive or quirky, without understanding the true needs of their customers. Plenty of very attractive web sites have won prestigious design awards while performing extremely poorly - and losing customers by the thousands!

Usability will be discussed in detail as we go through each specific page within the web site plan.