3 Proven Techniques for Improving Your Website’s Usability

The number one factor that makes or breaks your website is whether or not people can use it.This is typically referred to as your website’s usability.  It seems simple: if people can’t do what you want them to do (buy things, subscribe to things, request a call, etc.), they won’t do it.  Yet, because websites are so easy to change, several companies just create websites, web applications, e-newsletters, etc., and hope that the changes will help their business.

This article will help you focus on 3 proven techniques for improving your website’s performance: website analytics, usability testing, and personas.  Exactly how you choose to implement these techniques is obviously up to you.However, one thing is guaranteed: all three techniques help you get closer to the people who visit your website: their needs, their desires, and their behaviors.  This information is critical if you plan to optimize your website’s usability to achieve your goals.

1. Measure Progress with Website Analytics

Many companies mistakenly install a standard Website statistics program and only get a group of standard reports.  Typically, these reports do very little to help you judge the true effectiveness of your website.

2. Leverage Usability Testing

Usability testing is where you take people who would use your website, and actually watch them using it.  Typically, you ask the person to do things on the site, and you watch either over their shoulder, behind a one-way mirror, or via a second computer where you can see what’s being recorded on the test computer.

It’s amazing how many things you can make better on your website just by watching people use it.  Yet, as you get into it, you may find that hiring a usability professional for a testing project can be unnecessarily expensive.  Usability professionals are helpful, since they typically have substantial expertise in planning and conducting tests, as well as interpreting test results.  However, usability testing does not have to be fancy or formal: people are going to give you their opinion whether you’re sitting in a research company or at Starbucks.So be careful when hiring a professional that seems to make the testing process complicated or costly.  When someone does this, it’s usually only for their own financial gain.

3. Develop Personas

Let’s face it – no one reads a 20-page usability report from cover to cover. It just doesn’t happen.

This presents a great opportunity: why not give those key decision makers something memorable?  Enter personas.

Personas are a way to get everyone involved thinking about the actual people who visit your website.

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Tagged with: personas • usability testing • website analytics

Filed under: web site promotion

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