Xtremax - Web Design

Since the web is becoming the most powerful marketing and research tool for products and projects respectively. The Web Design needs to be more interactive. However, the web is not always good, they are black shaded or complex region which are not very must convenient for the general user to go through. In all this a new term came, the usability testing. Usability means how better we can use something for the people. It is measure of tendency on how people are going to interact with the application keeping its purpose in mind. On general Usability testing measures the usability of a system.

Why Usability Testing?

On the web usability is the most important feature. If a website fails to compile with the usability, it will lose traffic and audience. If navigation is difficult user will leave, if the home page take too much time to load the user will get irritated. Similarly if user cannot find his information and is lost, he will not appreciate the site anyway. Users, never read sitemaps or even manuals to get the information they need. Especially where there is 20 million websites over the internet.

If you are planning to do business online, than you need to care about usability even more, because if user cannot find the product and an easy way to check out the probably is very high that he will leave the site and you can lose a potential customer. Losing each user or time he wastes on your website looking for the right information is all what is causing you extra resource and money that is of no use.  Usability is something that has to be carrying on with the project all along the development process. You cannot just start thinking about usability at the final stage, this can cost you heavy bucks and at times to do a major change in the whole project, to cover one aspect of usability.

How to test the Usability?

The main purpose to carry usability testing is to find out if there are changes to be made within the developed system, so that it can be made easy for the user to evaluate and navigate through the system. This practice will make sure that end user, receives the system validated by the requirements. Any changes suggested by the tester at the time of usability testing, are the most crucial points that can change the stand of the system in intended/end user’s view. Developer/designer of the system need to incorporate the feedbacks (here feedback can be a very simple change in look and feel or any complex change in the logic and functionality of the system) of usability testing into the design and developed code of the system (the word system may be a single object or an entire package consisting more than one objects) in order to make system more and more presentable to the intended/end user.

Developers often in an attempt to make system more users friendly and flexible miss out some points, which are critical, when the user operates the system in real time. These issues can only be addressed through a utility of usability testing, where a testing environment can be creating for real time testing of the system. This environment along with the testing features also helps the developers to identify the regions which are and can be prone to further run time errors and can impede the ultimate user experience. To sum it up usability testing is an in house dummy release of the system before it actually is released for general users.

For a Web Site, there are few must do to assure enhance usability;

Navigation must be simple and user friendly, all the primary information must not be far from 1st or second level. There must be a track down to home page from every page. The logo must contain a link back to home page. The menus must be consistent throughout the website.

Content should not be clustered, must be separated through design elements or graphics. Use of dark colors and tiny fonts can annoy the user. Content should have some meaning and a pattern so user can follow the lead. Images must be use properly with alt tags. There are some basic UI standards, which if followed are good for the usability of a website.

Website must have options like, site map, help pages, and search. Site map should be updates with latest links, try to avoid broken links, and similarly all pages must be index in the search results, so if user try to find something the search generated result could be feasible for him. Quick links are another good option for the user to navigate. All these option must be validated before come to real time use.

Site with increase usability doesn’t assure more traffic, but it assures the longer stay for each user, which is calculated in terms of a more definite sale than others. This will also improve sale and services values for the product. After all it’s about taking care of the client and navigating him to the product. In general it will also be helpful for physically challenged web users to browse a site with enhance usability. So, spending few more bucks on the usability testing at early stages of the project can really play in the long run.