Is your website meeting all your business expectations? You may love it, but is it delivering all the customer enquires, sales and profits that you had hoped?

If it is that's fabulous, a well deserved congratulations to you and your team.
If not, or you're not sure, you are with the majority of organisations currently using the web and e-business in their marketing.

The Scale of the Problem
If that seems surprising, consider your own experience:-
* how many websites have you visited which have delighted you, where you felt that they really understood you and what you wanted?   
... on the other hand...
* how many websites have annoyed, confused or frustrated you, where you couldn't do or find what you wanted, were asked to do or provide something before you were ready, or which you simply didn't like?
Of these how much did you spend and have you been back?
 

The Technology Effect
For many users these questions reflect a fundamental problem of the web - they don't understand the technology of a site - which is fine, and they can't understand how to use it - which is disastrous!

The reason is simple, web sites are usually designed by people who have a deep understanding of technology, whereas most users neither know nor care about it.
They simply want a site which is intuitive and guides them to completing their intended tasks with ease.


In Defence of Designers .....
This is not a criticism of web designers - we work with many brilliant designers and graphics specialists who provide incredible value and are technically superb.
However, they work to briefs from business people who know their aims but not the technology.  Rarely can either view it from the dispassionate critical viewpoint of a potential client.
Technologists also differ from users in what they see as impressive. They value technical sophistication as they understand the complexity - so many sites contain dazzling effects which make them slow and annoying to users.

So how do you avoid running a site which may look great to you, but completely fails to please customers and profit your business?
Simple - address usability and user centred design.


The Usability Solution
* Optimising usability during design informs and guides the design process, reducing rework and thus time to market, as well as ensuring that the design will produce high user satisfaction.
* Post design, usability checks can provide early warnings of likely problem areas, allowing corrective actions to be taken quickly.
* When designs are implemented and may be underperforming, usability evaluations can highlight problem areas, often providing insight to explain comprehensive but often confusing statistics and metrics. This insight can then be used to drive rework or remedial activity.


If your site isn't achieving the results and targets you expect and you can't understand why - the chances are high that you have usability issues which are alienating users and losing you business.