As a web site owner, there are many investments that should be made in order to ensure your web site is both attractive to search engines and easy for users to navigate. Making the web site attractive to search engines involves a process commonly called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In this process, there are numerous ways to enhance your site with respect to on-page factors (title, meta data, on-page linking structure), off-page factors (who is linking to you and where those links are coming from, directory submissions), and site wide factors (duplicate content, intra-linking of site). When SEO is implemented correctly, it should make your site rank higher on search engines, thus driving more traffic to your site. More traffic means more conversions, and more conversions means beating out your competitors for the same user market as well as the obvious, more ROI.

The First Benefit of Usability: More Potential for ROI

Now that you’ve got the users onto your site, you must convert them from faceless visitors to a lead, or better yet, a sale. But before your users convert, they must be able to find what they are looking for on your web site. This is a critical concept. Most businesses will invest primarily in the graphical design elements of a web site or new functionality, which isn’t necessarily a bad investment (you still want users to have a pleasurable visual experience). However, the truth is that it doesn’t matter how good your content is, nor how pretty your web site looks, or even how cool the new Flash functionality works. If users can’t find it, it doesn’t exist. If they can’t find it, they cannot convert.

When $25 billion in potential profit is lost every year due to web site usability issues (Zona Research, 2001), it seems practical to recommend that usability be a central component in every process of building or redesigning a web site.

What Exactly is Usability?

Usability is focused upon three simple concepts (among many others):

1. Discoverable - Can users find what they are looking for?

• If so, how fast?
• How efficiently? And can they do it again, but quicker the second time around?

2. Satisfaction- Are they satisfied?

• Does your web site follow conventions that users have grown to expect?
• Did they accomplish the goal they set out to satisfy?

3. Usefulness – How useful is the site?

• Does it serve its purpose?
• Will users want to revisit to obtain their objectives?

If your site is built with a customer centric focus versus a business centric focus, you will satisfy all of the above mentioned principles.

The Second Benefit of Usability: Reduced Training and Support Costs, Increased Productivity

If employed correctly, the usability process can reduce telephone and email support as well as user training. One case that comes to mind is that of a login feature which resides on an arbitrary page on your web site. The user then has to dig through many links, often with no success in finding what they’re searching for. Frustrated, they call up a sales representative. After waiting 10 minutes on the phone while listening to drab elevator music, the user’s frustration only increases. After jumping through what seems like a million hoops, the user is finally greeted by the account rep, who then has to guide the user through the sinuous forest of links until finally reaching the destination where the user can log in successfully. Sure, this exchange can be completed within 1 or 2 minutes of the rep’s time, but that time can be better utilized closing deals than supporting customers. In addition, these few minutes do not include the time it took to train the rep on the operating functions of the company’s site. If a web site (or any other product) is easy to use, it will require less training.

Another scenario that comes to mind is all too typical within any organization. Imagine that your company’s site has an intranet (which it probably does) that employees utilize to help them understand the policies and procedures associated with their work. Imagine how much productivity would be wasted if employees are busy trying to hunt down information due to a poorly planned information architecture. If the site was laid out with usability principles in mind, the employee would be able to find the information needed immediately and be able to do their work instead of wasting their time searching for information in order to perform their work tasks, or worse, disrupting a co-worker’s or manager’s valuable time to ask for that information.

The Third Benefit of Usability: Stronger Brand

Another reason to invest in usability is the increased positive brand image. Your brand extends the marketing materials disseminated to your end users; it is also the experience the user has with the people, products, and services of your company. Your web site is a facet of this engaged user experience. If the user has a negative experience with your web site, 58% will not return to the web site (Forrester Research). Moreover, any marketing materials (email campaigns, newsletters, brochures) later disseminated to the user will also be associated with the negative experience and will ultimately be rejected as spam. Not to mention the negative ‘word of mouth’ viral marketing that will be generated from just one negative experience.

Usability and SEO Go Hand In Hand

Now that both the positive and negative implications of Usability and SEO have been explored, you may be wondering: How and when should these two potential investments be implemented? As with all plans, timing and execution are essential components of any good campaign. Luckily, usability and SEO should be implemented in tandem with one another.

For example, let’s say you invest only in SEO. If you get more traffic to your site but your site is still a mess, it doesn’t matter how many visitors come to your site because your conversion rate will still be low. Now, let’s say you invest only in usability. Well, now you have a functional site, but not enough traffic is being driven to your site in order to convert users. Thus, the best way to improve your site is to invest in both these elements simultaneously. When done correctly, improving your site will ultimately improve your bottom line.

Take Aways

1. Usability benefits not only the users but the business- increased ROI, reduced training costs, stronger brand among many others.

2. To obtain the maximum results for your investment, an SEO and SEM strategy should be integrated with your Usability strategy.

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The day began just like any other as a cancer patient was receiving his normal radiotherapy treatment from the Therac-25 machine. The machine had two distinct modes, “e” for electron and “x” for X-ray. Despite the obvious problems which could arise from having both an electron beam and a high powered X-ray beam programmed into the same machine, the operator assumed she could use the machine without encountering any problems. She began to input the prescription data, and due to her previous experience, she was able to input this information very quickly.

After double checking her inputs, the operator (a trained radiology technician) noticed that the mode was in X-ray instead of electron. Realizing the problem that this created, she hit the “cursor up” command in an attempt to correct the mistake. Then, after pressing the “return” key several times, the treatment was administered to the patient. Yet the technician was completely unaware that her actions had triggered a bug in the software.

During the course of the treatment, an error classified as “Malfunction 54” occurred, informing the technician that an underdose had been administered.

Following standard operating procedures, the technician hit “P” to proceed with the treatment. However, upon doing so, a second dose of treatment was administered to the patient, who immediately realized that something was wrong and began screaming. The operator, who was isolated in another room separate from the patient, heard nothing. There were audio and video monitors in the room which allowed the patient to interact with the operator, but that day, none of the equipment was working.

Five months later, the patient was dead. His death was directly attributed to the radioactive overdoses he received during his “treatment.”

So, this story is both sad and interesting, but what does it have to do with usability?

Usability deals with the ease of use (intuitiveness) of designs. More specifically, good design encompasses numerous factors, many of which were overlooked or ignored by the programmers of the Therac-25 system. Below is a list of what constitutes “good” design.

• Superior designs allow for the exploitation of human behavior. As cognitive beings, humans are natural pattern matchers and button pushers. If prior research or usability testing had been performed on this machine, test results would’ve revealed the rate at which an experienced user could input parameters. Yet after the recall of the Therac-25 machine, its makers discovered that the notorious “Malfunction 54” error would occur when keys were pressed successively under an 8 second time frame. An experienced user, I would imagine, would have the skill necessary to input such parameters at a rate that would fall below this time frame.
• Efficient designs ensure the clarity of the system through immediate visual clues. In the case at hand, there was no connection between the patient’s room and the operator’s room. Although audio and monitoring equipment existed, there was no backup system allowing for redundancy.
• Operative design provides informative descriptions of errors which occur in the system, allowing the user to gain not only an understanding of the malfunction, but a possible solution to correct it. “Malfunction 54″ is neither descriptive nor correct. Rather, the system should have specified that an underdose had been given, allowing the technician to identify the problem and improvise a solution. Had this occurred, the patient’s life could have been saved.
• Effective design creates a clear differentiation between two completely distinct modes of operation. An “e” and “x” design doesn’t provide any substantial visual feedback to the operator, as the letters are not physically displaceable. A better alternative would have been to create two different looking beam heads for the machine, allowing the operator to discern when they were using the wrong beam on a patient.

Take Aways

Mission critical system errors like those of the Therac-25 system illustrate the consequences of both bad design and the lack of user testing. In this case, the cost of poor usability was quite unfortunate; it literally became a matter of life and death. In fact, two other patients died from the same machine. Thus, in the end, we are left with some pressing questions: What is the cost of poor usability? How much is it really worth to you and your business?

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