*Every £1 invested in improving your website's usability returns £10 to £100 (source: IBM)*
Web usability is about making your website in such a way that your site users can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently. A usable website can reap huge benefits on to your website and your business.
First thing, your website has to be easy to navigate. Imagine your website as the inside of a supermarket, people expect to buy their lottery tickets by the door and they expect to go to the back shelves for their milk and bread. So make sure, your site isn’t too different as you don’t want your visitors to feel lost and then leave as a result.
You also never want to restrict your users navigating through your supermarket in the way that they want to. Did you know that every time a link is opened in a new window the back button is disabled? Did you also know that 60% of Web users employ the back button as the primary means of navigation?
Therefore if you do this then you're preventing 60% of your users from using their primary navigation. Imagine if 1000 people came to your supermarket but 600 of these couldn’t go back to that bar of chocolate they just walked past in isle 2. Do you think that these visitors are going to use your store again? We think not.
There are lots of other ways that websites can place restrictions on its users, ultimately damaging their usability - can you think of any more? Just think back to the last time a website really infuriated you and what annoying thing did it do to make you feel that way? Then look at your own website and check you’re not doing anything similar.
