Technology ………. it’s a People Thing!

Top-Usability : Usability Assessment and
Ease-of-use Design services

To arrange an friendly chat about your needs or our services:-

E-mail
info@topusability.co.uk

Or call
    0845 644 2414 International
     #44 845 644 2414

Is your website meeting all your business expectations? You may love it, but is it delivering all the customer enquires, sales and profits that you had hoped?

If it is - that's fabulous, a well deserved congratulations to you and your team.

If not, or you're not sure, you are with the majority of organisations currently using the web and e-business in their marketing. If that seems surprising, consider your own experience:-

• how many websites have you visited which have delighted you, where you felt that they really understood you and what you wanted?         ... on the other hand...
• how many websites have annoyed, confused or frustrated you, where you couldn't do or find what you wanted, were asked to do or provide something before you were ready, or which you simply didn't like?

Of these how much did you spend and have you been back?

The Technology Chasm

No-one intends to produce poor usability but it usually sneaks out of a yawning “Technology chasm.

Designers understand what the technology is capable of achieving, indeed take great delight in doing technically sophisticated things .... They don’t know your business or clients.....

Business people who have to brief the designers know their business and objectives but not what the technology can achieve or what is appropriate. Because they are out of their comfort zone they frequently defer to the technical specialists (would you argue with your medical specialist?)  ......

The frequent result is a site which may impress the socks off other techies, which often relies on a knowledge of technical conventions, may look great to you when the designer has explained his thinking ...... but which frequently fails to achieve your objectives because the design fails to centre on the user.

Your clients rarely know or care about the technology or wider business - they are at your site to achieve a specific objective, generally to gain information, to find out about what you can offer, or to make a transaction which they are confident about.

“Ease of use design” and usability - put the user centre stage - using design principles which focus on the user perspective - which by definition is not available to either the designer or the business owner.  

So how do you avoid running a site which may look great to you, but completely fails to please customers and profit your business?    Simple - address usability and user centred design.

The Usability Solution - when is the right time?

* Optimising usability during design informs and guides the design process, reducing rework and thus time to market, as well as ensuring that the design will produce high user satisfaction.

* Post design, usability checks can provide early warnings of likely problem areas, allowing corrective actions to be taken quickly.

* Post implementation usability testing is a diagnostic tool for under-performing sites, used to highlight problem areas, often providing insight to explain comprehensive but often confusing statistics and metrics. This insight can then be used to drive rework or remedial activity.

If your site isn't achieving the results and targets you expect and you can't understand why - the chances are high that you have usability issues which are alienating users and losing you business.

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