Usability is a crucial issue. Most internet users are engaging in directed search: they are looking for specific information (or trying to achieve a specific task). If your website is not easy to use the danger is that users will go elsewhere for the information and in turn to transact business. If your site makes it difficult for people to achieve their tasks, they will assume your organization is similarly disorganized, hard to deal with.

Key questions to ask about your website are:

•  how easy is it for first time users to accomplish basic tasks
• how fast can repeat users access the appropriate content / functionality
• are users successful in achieving their tasks?
• how many navigation errors do users make?

There are many different approaches to usability analysis but the simplest is user testing. The process is essentially:

1. Identify representative users

•     these should ideally be representative of the targeted users (e.g. customers)
• studies find that 5 testers are sufficient to discover most usability issues, although if user groups differ greatly (for example business managers and technical specialists) then 5 users from each group is ideal
• avoid anyone involved in the website development project

2. Create a set of representative tasks

• produce a printed list of tasks for testers to achieve using the site
• some of these should be simple (e.g. find a contact phone number for general enquiries), some more complex (requiring the testers to navigate to the bottom level of the site and utilise any interactive features).

3. Organise for the test to take place in as controlled an environment as possible

• each tester should perform the tasks alone, without consultation or distraction

4. Be there and watch what your testers do

•  observe the proceedings and make notes about successes and failures
• do not provide advice or answer question or explain the design / approach / navigation,
• testers should not explain their actions, simply do them (what people say they do & what they actually do often differ

Some usability issues may be discovered by most or all testers (the most important to fix) but it is likely some issues will only occur for some testers (ideally to be addressed as well).

It is not part of the formal usability test, but once the testing is finished, the opportunity exists to ask for specific and general feedback.

Extensive usability resources can be found at Jakob Nielsen's Website: http://www.useit.com.