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The Importance of Website Usability for Small Businesses

When you launched your website, did you undertake much usability testing? Most business owners would say they did not, as this is not always something which springs to mind when you’re embroiled in HTML, CSS and SEO to get your site to launch. However, usability is a critical factor, particularly for the small business who relies on their site to drum up trade.

What is usability?

Usability can be defined as the functionality of your website to a typical user. Think about whether your site is easy to understand for a first time visitor - will it take them any time to get used to finding their way around? Is it efficient, both in the way the navigation is laid out and the loading times of the pages themselves? If they go wrong, can they recover from their errors easily?

Usability has been referred to as ‘the science of making technology work for people’, and as a small business, it is your job to ensure that your website works for your customers in a way that is simple, painless and quick.

Why should you care about usability?

Research from the Online Marketing Institute shows some worrying statistics regarding websites with poor usability. For example:

• 85 per cent of visitors will abandon a poorly designed website.
• 83 per cent will leave if it takes too many clicks to get to what they want.
• 62 per cent failed to make a purchase simply because they could not find the product.
• 40 per cent would not return to that site again because of the bad experience.

In the competitive world of online sales and marketing, getting website usability wrong can be fatal to a business. Good usability is not that hard to achieve, but needs to be thought about in a logical and prescriptive manner in order to get it right.

Tips for a website with more usability

• Get the content right: Creating a site with good content is only the first hurdle. Make the content easy to read, easy to scan and simple to understand by using paragraphs, sub-headings, lists and simple language.
• Consider the navigation: Navigating around your site should be simple. Make it easy for customers to find the things they want, and easy for them to find their way back again.
• Include a good search function: If a customer arrives at your site knowing what they are looking for, you don’t want to hamper that sales opportunity by making them fish around to find the item. Build in a robust search function that is clearly displayed on the home page to help them find what they need straight away.
• Reduce loading times: Nothing is more frustrating than waiting around as big images, complex redirects and sluggish coding takes its time to load up. Research shows that around 40 per cent of customers will navigate away if the site takes longer than 3 seconds to load a page, so undertake some comprehensive website load testing to find out if your sites performance is up to scratch.
• Learn to love white space: White space is your friend when it comes to making your site easy to read from a customer’s point of view. Consider how lines are spaced, the font you have chosen and gaps between sections to ensure you are giving your customer the best chance to comprehend the content you are offering them.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Will Hemner .