A website is like an information flow, with you as the provider and your site visitors as the receivers of the information. If you don't plan your website with this in mind right from the start, you could find yourself with a brand new website that solves all your immediate needs... but not those of your site visitors. Clicking away from your website has never been easier for Internet users. There are about 35 million websites competing with yours on the Internet (source: https://www.murdok.org/images/64cb50499a35cgif. The three boxes in the middle answer some immediate questions that users may have and proactively address their concerns. The contact us button on the top-left can remain in that position on every page, so users always have the opportunity to jump to the contact page. 3. Usability testing Once the website plan has been created, it's time to test it. This is the most important usability test that needs to be done and the one that will save you the most time and money in the long run. Every 1 invested in making your website easy-to-use returns 10 to 100 (source:http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/23/). If you don't do any usability testing you may discover that the structure of the website doesn't make sense once the website's up and running. This can and has happened and it leaves you with two choices: redesign the website or make a new website - neither are attractive options. The most common objections to doing usability testing are:
- It's too expensive!
- It'll take too much time!
- I don't know how to do it!
- What's the point of this website?
- If you were on this homepage, where you would click? And where after that?
- Is it what you need? That's it! As long as these five people roughly fit into your user profile everything should be fine. It's been shown that using five people for a usability test will uncover 85% of the usability issues of the website (source:
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