Planning for Website Usability

After you sketch or wire frame a website you are about to build, always do some serious thinking about usability. It helps to imagine you are someone who has come to the site for the information it contains and then ask yourself the following questions:

• What do you think the user will actually do?
• What kind of goals might they have for coming to your site?
• How hard or easy will it be for them to attain those goals?
• How hard or easy do you want it to be for them to attain those goals?
• Are you adhering to standard web conventions? If not, have you let your user know what else to expect?

Web standards and conventions are more than what’s laid out in a lengthy W3C document. A lot of them are just adhering to what we, as web users expect. For example, if text has underlines in it and/or is a different color, we expect that text to be a link. If something looks like a button, we expect clicking on it to do something, like process the comment form we just filled out or adding an item to our cart. It’s perfectly OK to get creative and break away from the norm and not use all the web conventions. But be sure to let your viewers know upfront what to expect, especially as most of us are simply expecting a web page to act like a web page!

As you look at the new sketch or wire frame you’ve created, do any of the just discussed scenarios make you realize any revisions need to be made? If so, start over, I do it all the time. It will make for a much easier and more receptive design.