A web site is liked more when the user knows how to use it. When your site is easily navigated it is more liked and more referred. Usability is a quality attribute that asses how easy the user can interact with your site.  Some things to consider with usability can be but is not limited to the 5 quality components (learnability, Efficiency, memorability, Errors and satisfaction), utility, importance, and how to improve usability.  These are some of the topics that I can help to inform you on so that you can better improve your web site and it’s popularity.

The first thing that you should consider is the 5 quality components. These components are the key element to make your site more user friendly. When trying to make your site the most user friendly/ easily navigated just think about this acronym LEMES (Learnablity, Efficiency, Memorability, Errors, and Satisfaction). This acronym will help you to decide if your site has good usability. Learnability is how easily users can accomplish basic tasks when they first encounter them (i.e. filling out request forms, searching etc.).  Efficiency is when the user does accomplish the task at hand that they can do it quickly, if it takes them more than a couple of minutes to figure out how quickly they can perform this task then it probably isn’t ver efficient. Memorability, is when a user can return to your site and perform that same task after a period of time away from your site. Basically it’s how easily they can re-establish the proficiency for the task at hand. Errors is how many times a person makes a mistake on the task, how severe the mistake is during this task, and how easily the user can recover from these errors. Finally, Satisfaction which is how pleased the user will be to use your design. If you can remember LEMES when reviewing your site for usability your site can and will be user friendly enough to create stickiness (where someone will continue/ return to use your site).

Something else you can consider would be utility (design functionality). When considering this you need to ask yourself, “does my site do what the user need?”. It matters little if your site does what the user needs but does not do what the user wants, which means that Efficiency and satisfaction will be poor for your site. It also matters little when the site does what the user wants but it’s hard to get there, this means that you did not follow LEMES properly and the user will not return to your site making your stickiness not so sticky.

The importance of your site is also based from LEMES. If your website it to difficult to use, fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on a site then the user will not return to your site and they will not refer people to your site. If the user gets lost, information is hard to read, or doesn’t answer key questions then users LEAVE! Leaving is the first response for a user when they feel overwhelmed, lost, or confused.  It has been stated that the best practices call for spending about 10% of your design project budget on usability. This will double your websites desired quality metrics and almost double your intranets (this would be your side of the site that the user will not see) quality metrics.

So you already have a site up and running, but the usability is pretty bad? A good way to improve bad usability is to do user testing, the most basic but useful. Let people use your site and monitor their progress. Observe what the users do, where they succeed and where they have difficulties with the user interface.  You must allow the testers to figure out the problems on their own. If you direct them in any way the results will be contaminated and you should start over.  To find  the most important problems with your usability I suggest using 5 testers to completely cover your bases. I also suggest running small test, as opposed to 1 large test, because they are more efficient.

If you follow the steps of LEMES and keep in mind that not everyone knows how to work a website as well as others, your sites usability will be pretty good. When your sites usability is good, then your stikiness is good. This means that your site will become more effecient, more important and more attrictive.