The page is pleasant to look at and cleanly designed
Good Content is Critical
A site with good content, regardless of its subject, is one that
provides products or information that is useful or beneficial to users. A
good usable site will make it clear what information or content is
available and at what price AND what is not available. A good usable
site should define clearly all subscription packages offered.
Ease of Access to Information
Good navigation, precise location indicators, secondary
navigation, clear linked text and a well-organized structure all
contribute to making information easy to find for a wide range of
different users.
Bearing in mind that many users are inexperienced, it may be
necessary to include explanations of things you consider selfexplanatory.
For example, an inexperienced user may need an
explanation of how to use a drop down menu. Remember, make it as
easy as possible for people to use your website.
Quick Access to Information
This is the aim of the majority of web users. It can be broken into
two important aspects:
Speed of Page Loading
This requires, in particular, attention to images to ensure they are
properly optimized and do not excessively delay load time. It may also
mean breaking up long articles and ensuring that important content is
at the top of the page where it will load first.
Speed of Access to Content
This is where the 3-click rule comes in - no important content
should be more than 3 clicks from the home page. Some standards
even say that it should be no more than two clicks.
One helpful way to speed access to content is to consider each
type of user, select the content that they are most likely to be
interested in and create links from the home page to one piece of
content for each group. This will get them quickly to the appropriate
part of the site.
Cleanly Designed Pages
Cleanly designed pages are pleasant to look at and easy to read.
It is almost impossible to make a site with an image shown as a tiled
background usable - the whole thing is too distracting and confusing.
It takes no great design skills to create clean pages; it just requires
thought and adherence to the principle that when it comes to design,
less usually is more.
Download Status
Most paid membership websites are limited to online access and
information download rather than selling products. There should be
clear download instructions provided. Your website should also state
the size of the file in kilobytes and the estimated time of download for
a user having a 56K modem, DSL, Cable and so on.
Usability Problems
While for large commercial sites investment in full-scale usability
studies may be essential, few small sites can afford such luxuries.
However, identifying problems with usability for your site need be
no more complicated than asking a few (honest) friends to act as
guinea pigs on your site and, if possible, watching them silently as
they do this. Watching users try to find information at your site can be
both instructive and quite surprising.
Remember that if at any stage you feel the urge to intervene and
explain, then you have identified a usability problem.
List of the Most Common Usability Problems
