The Pros and Cons of Usability

The usability of a website though forms a crucial aspect contributing to its success, is often overlooked by many web designers. Everyone knows the so called benefits of making a website efficiently usable for the users, but still not many tackle the issue seriously.

Usability has business benefits too but when it comes to the initial investments pertaining to it, business prefer to shy away. It may be because of tight timescales or limited budgets the usability testing of the website often finds place the bottom slots of the website development agenda. User-testing may cost a little time and money, but it forms a strong element of the website development process.

Let us examine the pros and benefits of usability:

The Cons:
There is a wide spread assumption among the public that user testing is time consuming and expensive. And even if professional web development companies do realize their benefits, convincing the clients proves to be a daunting task.
As per the past history, usability testing was an operation of large organizations and required millions of dollars. It was performed in expensive usability labs using two way mirrors computer suites, and video surveillance. Large amounts of statistically relevant data was gathered and analyzed. And for this, an ample number of subjects from the target audience needed to be recruited.
And this process was too expensive for the smaller organizations. Thus most companies choose to overlook the process altogether.

However, the fact is that usability testing need not be this large scale and expensive. In fact it can be easy and inexpensive and can be done efficiently.

The Pros:
The benefits of usability testing are numerous to outweigh any small initial investments that you may have to make. Some of them are:
.
Fast issue detection
Testing the website’s usability at regular intervals during the website development process allows you to identify potential problems there and then. It will bring out usability issues and technical flaws that you can fix up. Detecting these kinds of problems at an early stage makes them easier to fix their codes.

Increased user satisfaction
A website that is easy to use boasts of more number of satisfied customers. And happy and satisfied customers are critical to your business expansion.

If your website is complex and confusing, the visitors will only get frustrated and leave never to return. This may further lead to negative criticism and publicity.
And in a world that thrives on repeat visitors and customer recommendations, this can be a serious blow.

Reduced support costs
Even if your website faces very less competition in the internet marketplace, usability testing should not be waived off.
Any usability flaw may result in large numbers of support calls and complaints that may cost you from some other channel. It may be more economical to invest in a good usability test rather that answering the same questions over and over again.

Increased efficiency
A website that is easy to use can get you monetary benefits if it is efficient enough. If your office staff uses the website, it may be easier for them to work on a website with minimum usability issues. This would translate into tasks getting done quicker.

If the usability test is done efficiently, then it can provide a real return on investment.