| Can people who come to your site find what they need? Can
they accomplish tasks such as completing surveys, taking quizzes, and so on?
The study of the Usability of a site helps ensure that the
answers to these and similar questions is "Yes." Usability can be divided
into five components:
- Learnability: can people learn to use your site quickly and
easily?
- Memorability: when people return to your site, can they recall
how to use it?
- Efficiency: can users do what they need to do without excess
expenditure of energy and time?
- Error rates: how often to people make mistakes (such as
getting lost, going to the wrong place, and so on) when using your site?
- Satisfaction: what is the subjective reaction of users to your
site?
One of the leading experts in usability, including website usability is
Jakob Nielsen. You can see some of his work at
www.useit.com
Among his books are
- Usability Engineering
- Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity
- Homepage Usability
- Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond
Another interesting article is
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/articles/dwmx_design_tips.html
|
