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No. 34 Usability and Conditions for Website Success (July 26, 2006)
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 Conditions for Online Business Success
We live in an age which is flooded with products and services and where consumer needs are increasingly diverse and segmented. When cars first became available, it would have been a simple task to sell any type of car, but now a car must be one that meets the individual needs of the buyer. No longer is quantity alone enough ・products must meet expectations for quality.
Furthermore, the revolution in information distribution brought about by the Internet has decreased the value of traditional forms of media and increased the power of consumers. Nowadays, rather than commercial advertising, consumers put more faith in word-of-mouth information obtained through social networking sites (SNS) such as MySpace or personal blogs, and make their decisions based on this information.
In turn, one-sided commercial marketing and promotions such as self-serving, overly-eccentric ads have become less effective. These days, the service or product which meets customer needs and the quality of that service or product is more highly valued by consumers than marketing or promotions.
These market changes have caused companies, fighting for their own survival, to take the sometimes excessive amounts previously expended on advertising and promotion and instead use them to generate fundamental value and cultivate fundamental customer experience.
In other words, the more a company's competitiveness lies in quality than quantity, and in marketing clout rather than productivity, the more the ability to grasp customer needs and become the answer to those needs will be a critical factor in determining the success or failure of that business.
Naturally, this also holds true for websites. In fact, it is even more important to have a good grasp of user needs in advance when talking about a website, where you are unable to directly see the users.
Therefore, in order to transform your website into a business tool, you must first satisfy users・needs so that your tool will bring profit to your company.
Increasing Usability = Transforming Your Site into a Business Tool
By now you should understand that the fundamental concept behind usability and the cornerstone of business success are both satisfying user needs.
The next stage is the process of linking up your users・needs, discovered through your comprehensive user survey, and your business strengths, along with the value you can offer - all on your website. Sometimes this can be accomplished simply by changing how services and products offered on your site are displayed. Sometimes it may require making some fundamental changes to the content of services and products offered on your site, in order to meet web users・needs.
By taking these steps to align user and business interests based on the user's viewpoint, design communication with your users on the web, and be sure to reflect those concepts on the screen, your website can break away from the pamphlet type of website and be reborn as a business tool. Of course you will observe noticeable changes following this reincarnation such as increased sales via your website and increased customer acquisition.
The methodology that defines the series of steps described above is user-centered design, and the concept that summarizes that series steps is usability. Usability does not simply mean pointing out superficial aspects of how a site is created, but rather asks the question who is the site for?・
These days the question is not simply whether you have a site, but how valuable your site is. In this day and age in which the way information is distributed has been completely revolutionized by the Internet and consumers have become very powerful, the concept of Usability is an extremely important value which will be a driving force of the future Internet community.
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