Ensuring the effectiveness of internet solutions is particularly important where it translates directly into business profits. This is exactly the case with online stores. Most people are surprised by the fact that the effectiveness of eCommerce sites is currently very low. AS MANY AS 75 percent of potential customers abandon their shopping carts before finalizing their purchases. Nielsen Norman Group research shows that increasing the usability of an eCommerce system allows for a rapid sales increase of 100 to 400 percent. This happens because users of usable websites find what they are looking for more often, are not afraid to order, do not abandon their carts, and return more frequently – recommending the site to their friends. Usability therefore translates directly into efficiency and tangible profits. In the case of portals and corporate websites, usability makes users more quickly convinced of the company, visit its pages more often, and feel sympathy and trust towards it. In fact, only usable websites fulfill their main task – they allow users to reach the information they are looking for in an intuitive way. Increasing the effectiveness of online communication is currently the main challenge facing website designers.
A site for the company, not for the users
One of the first and main mistakes many companies make when designing their websites is developing a poor site structure. They forget who the site is addressed to and divide it into departments corresponding to the company’s internal structure. Currently, many websites, especially those of government offices, use an unfriendly division into units and departments. This division should have long been replaced
by guides, where after indicating a problem, one would get advice on who to contact, what documents to prepare, and during what hours the matter can be handled. Menu item names are another issue worth considering. The previously mentioned adherence to conventions should also be applied here. Let’s not make users guess what “Join us” means if we can express the same thing briefly and unambiguously as “Careers”. Research on user behavior has shown that the process of surfing websites
resembles browsing a newspaper more than reading a book; if we do not use a hierarchical structure of information, users will get lost in the flood of information and will not want to read anything. Taking into account the increasing percentage of dyslexics and the growing haste characterizing our society, we construct short and concise texts, written in simple language. Many companies pay a lot of attention to creating a fabulous graphic design for their pages.
The article comes from the magazine “e-Fakty” 2/2005.