By now you must have heard the phrase ‘usability’ being bandied about in discussions on web design. But just what is usability and why is it so topical?

Visitors won’t use your web site if they can’t find their way around it. Usability is the art and science of making the navigation and functional aspects of your website simple, easy and obvious to use.

Although there is much discussion on this topic, for me, Steve Krug’s book on the subject, Don’t make me think explains it best. The book’s tagline is a common sense approach to web usability. It is, and it’s an easy read too.

Usability tests show that readers scan web pages. Their eyes dart around the screen, attracted by what they are looking for. They have expectations of what a website should be like and they are impatient.

Steve’s first law of usability is ‘don’t make me think’. Your visitor should be able to “get it” - what it is and how to use it. The webpage should be self evident, obvious, self-explanatory.

But there must be more to it than that! There is. So, here are the principles that make a website more usable for your visitors,

• Create a clear visual hierarchy - make important parts prominent, group related things together, such as navigation links, and use plenty of ‘white space’ to make your page clear and uncluttered.
• Use accepted conventions - navigation is usually on the left or across the top, a search box is normally in the top right hand corner, links are normally underlined and in blue.
• Separate your page into clearly defined areas - this could be things I can do, news stories I can read, products for sale, or navigation. It should be clear what this part of the page is for.
• Make it obvious what is clickable - be consistent here. Use buttons and easily recognisable images, blue underlined text or coloured text that changes colour when the mouse hovers above it.
• Keep the noise down - don’t make the page so busy you don’t know what to look at next. If everything clamours for attention, what will you choose? And keep the background simple.

The easiest way to appreciate what is, and is not, good usability is to look at examples, and Steve’s book has plenty of good examples to illustrate each mistake and how to correct it.

It may be obvious to you how to use your site, but it probably won’t be to a stranger who has never seen it before. So many Internet websites are poorly designed with users in mind.

Don’t let your site be one of them.