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Planning A Usable Website A Three step Guide
website is like an information that fulfils the
information flow, with you immediate needs of your site
as the provider and your visitors. This is the fundamental
site visitors as the receivers of principle behind usable website
the information. If you don't design, so let's repeat it one
plan your website with this in more time: Your website has to
mind right from the start, you provide information that fulfils
could find yourself with a brand the immediate needs of your site
new website that solves all your visitors.
immediate needs... but not those
of your site visitors. OK, now we've got that straight,
we come up against a problem:
Clicking away from your website Your goals for the website are
has never been easier for probably different to the
Internet users. There are about immediate needs of your site
35 million websites competing visitors. Oh dear.
with yours on the Internet
(source: Let's illustrate this problem,
http://www.zooknic.com/Domains/co and its solution, with the
unts.html). Search engine results example of a web design company's
are becoming better and better website. Their immediate goal is
and Internet connection speeds to get visitors to contact them
faster and faster - finding one and ultimately commission them to
of your competitors' websites is do some web development work.
now very quick and very easy. Their site visitors are probably
interested in getting web
1. Work out your site visitors' development work done (if not,
immediate needs why are they on this website?),
but it's unlikely that this is
Your website has to provide their immediate need when they
arrive at the website. 2. Create an information flow
The immediate needs of the site Now we've worked out what our
visitors' are probably to answer site visitors' immediate needs
questions like: are, we need to create an
information flow, a path (or
- Can I trust them? paths) that your site visitors
will traverse whilst on your
- Are they any good at what they website. The path(s) will
do? initially address their concerns
and needs and will gradually take
- Will they get the job done? them towards completing your goal
for them. To create this plan
Before the website begins to sell we'll need to:
to its site visitors, it has to
answer their questions and put - Identify the different groups
their fears to rest. This is of people who'll use your website
fundamentally important, so one
more time: Before the website - Work out what you want each of
begins to sell to its site these groups to achieve on your
visitors, it has to answer their website
questions and put their fears to
rest. - Identify the information you'll
need to provide for them to
In the case of this web design achieve this (and in what order)
company, they could provide a
portfolio, client testimonials - Work out what might put them
etc. Can you think of any other off achieving this
information they should offer?
- Identify the information you'll
need to provide to prevent them 4. Company background
being put off 5. Staff bios
6. Terms & conditions
From this, you'll be able to 7. Good web design tips
create a list of website pages 8. Contact us
and a rough idea of how they
might flow together. You'll then The web design company's ultimate
be able to work out exactly what goal is for site visitors to
pages to include on the website contact them and request their
and how to group these pages services. Wherever users are in
together. this flow, they must be able to
easily and immediately jump
Bear in mind though, some users straight to the contact page at
will need more information than any point.
others, so you'll always need to
provide them with a choice of You've probably already seen this
continuing on the information in action on websites. You arrive
flow or jumping off so that they at the homepage and there are two
can achieve the goal you've set or three prominent links (often
for them. in the form of boxes) telling you
some basic information and
Going back to the website of the requesting that you click on them
web design company, an to take you into some other part
information flow that their site of the website. You go to that
visitors might go on could look page on the website, read the
something like this: information and then choose where
to go next. And this keeps going
1. Homepage on, until you either quit or
2. Portfolio complete the desired goal of the
3. Client testimonials website.
So, the web design company's If you don't do any usability
homepage might look something testing you may discover that the
like what you see at structure of the website doesn't
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/imag make sense once the website's up
es/plan-usable.gif. and running. This can and has
happened and it leaves you with
The three boxes in the middle two choices: redesign the website
answer some immediate questions or make a new website - neither
that users may have and are attractive options.
proactively address their
concerns. The contact us button The most common objections to
on the top-left can remain in doing usability testing are:
that position on every page, so
users always have the opportunity - It's too expensive!
to jump to the contact page.
- It'll take too much time!
3. Usability testing
- I don't know how to do it!
Once the website plan has been
created, it's time to test it. Wrong, wrong, and wrong!
This is the most important Usability testing, especially at
usability test that needs to be this early stage, is incredibly
done and the one that will save cheap, quick, informal and easy
you the most time and money in to do. You just need to show five
the long run. Every "£1 invested people the plan/site map of the
in making your website website and ask them:
easy-to-use returns "£10 to "£100
(source:http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/ - What's the point of this
easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/23/). website?
profile everything should be
- If you were on this homepage, fine. It's been shown that using
where you would click? And where five people for a usability test
after that? will uncover 85% of the usability
issues of the website
- Is it what you need? (source:http://www.useit.com/aler
tbox/20000319.html).
That's it! As long as these five
people roughly fit into your user
About the Author:
This article was written by Trenton Moss. He's crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.
Read more articles by: Trenton Moss
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
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