Rightly understand the concept of website usability

Hi,
Web usability is an approach to make web sites easy to use for an end-user, without the requirement that any specialized training be undertaken. While developing a website' usability interface and features, most often the focus is placed on building a technically sound website, instead of keeping the user in mind. When you optimize the website for increasing the search engine rankings, there are various questions that should be asked such as - Who is the targeted audience? Is it an average web searcher? Someone who is entirely inexperienced? Or an internet savvy customer? By not considering such aspects, the design of the final website is either designed for technicality convenience or ends up giving lot of information to the user.

Find qualified search usability professional to assist you in the efforts and take note of these myths :

1. Optimize and design the website for the statistically average searcher/user-

A common mistake committed by most of the website designers, is to develop a website for the average user. The fact is that while designing there is no concept of an ‘average user'. Use the tool known as ‘personas' which describes the user for the product you are offering. It might contain facts about motivation, demographics, the context of use and other information that is relevant to the design context. They help keep the focus on the user and will make sure that the website is designed with the mental outlook of the customers and not of the owners.

Increased usage means my website is user friendly- It is not always true, so some of the ways to determine the website's usability are as follows: Memory-ability, Effectiveness, User satisfaction, Ease of learning (learning ability), Error prevention. You can also carry out some tests such as: Free exploration tests, Performance tests, Expectancy tests, Card sort tests, Visual affordance tests.

The user is ‘me'- While developing the website, you should always keep in mind that the target audience does not think the way you do. All the website developers, SEO professionals or management will not be spending thousands of dollars on the products and services offered, if they already knew how to exactly think like the user.