How Usability Can Leverage Conversion Rates
Understanding Usability and Utilizing it to Increase Conversions
I want to go over what usability is, how we can measure it and use it to improve our web designs. Then I want to introduce you to some usability principles from a main figure in UX.
So what is usability?
Usability’s main aim is to make designs more effective and enjoyable from a user’s perspective. That’s the main thing to take any from this right now is start thinking of design from the intent of the user. Now how can we measure Usability on our website. What if we what to test how usable a site is now or measure the changes to our site once we have made them?
This a simple list to start with:
- How easy is it to use and navigate?
- How efficient, effective & satisfying is it to use?
- Is there proper feedback when needed?
Take a look into information architecture and site structure of our information to make sure it is presentable to our user. Is the user completing the tasks that you set out for them to do? Is the web design intuitive to them? When using shopping carts or filling out forms lets make sure to validate all form fields before finishing a checkout or other task.
How can we measure Usability?
Now we can start to see the questions we can ask people when user testing our website, as well as trying to answers to these questions with our analytics. When using Google Analytics we can collect a wide variety of information about the user’s navigation flow and how much time is spent on the website down to the page, but it still doesn’t answer all of usability questions. We need to dig deeper into how the user is actually interacting with the page.
Digging Deeper into Our Users with UX Testing Tools
We can do this with user testing and heat mapping tools to find out exactly how are users are engaging with our website and how the feel about it. After all if they feel good about your website they’ll feel good about your company. Usability helps us leverage conversion rates here at The Miami SEO Company because it yields two types of results. Usability can also reveal the quantitative as we as the qualitative results for the user.
- It reveals the quantitative result from the users interactions.
“How many times did user do X?” - It reveals the qualitative result from the users interactions.
“How did user feel about X?”
Introduction to Basic Usability Principles
It’s time to get into some usability principles, but first I want to introduce you to Jakob Nielsen. He’s a leading web usability consultant at the Nielsen Norman Group and he has a PhD in HCI (Human Computer Interactions). HCI is basically the study of how people interact physically and emotionally with computers. Lets take a look at some of his principles and what we can learn from them.
- Learnability
- Efficiency
- Memorability
- Satisfaction
- Errors
Learnability
How easy is it for the user to use the interface to accomplish basic tasks?
Efficiency
How quickly can a user perform the tasks once the design has been learned?
Memorability
Reestablishing proficiency after a period of not using the design.
Satisfaction
How pleasant was the experience while interacting with the design?
Errors
What kinds of errors are made and how quickly can the user recover from them?
About The Author
Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com
Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.
