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No.1 Importance of Usability (April 4, 2001)
Usability is a measure of how easy something is to use. Website usability is simply the ease with which visitors are able to use a website. When websites have problems in terms of usability, they:
1. Lose sales and members, and
2. Suffer a decline in brand power.
 Loss of Sales and Members
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A study conducted by Creative Good, Inc. showed that 43% of users give up during attempts to purchase products at e-commerce sites due to poor usability. Based on these results, Creative Good estimates the total loss of e-commerce sales at about $15 billion for the 2000 year-end holiday shopping season.
According to The State of Online Retailing 3.0, some 65% of online shopping carts are abandoned before the final purchase transaction. While this figure likely includes users who are just window shopping, there is a clear indication that some users don't know how to buy the items they've added to their cart, as a result of poor usability. Likewise, community sites targeting the acquisition of new members may bring in potential members through advertisements and other means, but lose many of them when visitors are unsuccessful in registering, due to poor site usability.
No matter how good a website's content or service is, the site offers no value if users cannot reach it. A web designer must first put together a site that offers content and services that are valuable from the user's perspective, and then go one step further and consider how to create a website in which users can easily reach the content or service they want. Ultimately, if users are not successful in buying products or registering for membership, the website will not be successful.
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Decline in Brand Power
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A user's experience on a website is directly linked to his or her opinion about the company that operates the site. An experience in which a user is unable to easily find the information they need or access the items they want to buy is stressful for the user. Some users may even express anger at the amount of time they've wasted.
When users have this type of experience, a website loses some of its brand power. In business fields where there is fierce competition such as online bookstores in which customers can easily find alternatives, customers are simply lost to the competing site.
Meanwhile, if a site has high usability, it can boost a company's brand power. A user who is able to easily buy the products they want and get the information they are interested in while using the website will remember that as a quality experience and will be motivated to return to the site again and again.
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As described above, usability is a key element in determining the success or failure of an online business. In particular, for online companies which only engage in business on the web, problems in usability can produce disastrous results.
Reference:
Creative Good, Inc.-http://www.creativegood.com/
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