WhatsWanted Web Design
Top Six Reasons Why Websites End Up Unusable!
Understanding how websites end up with a low score for usability will help you avoid the same mistakes in the future.
Here are the top six reasons we witness in the marketplace:
- Web developers (internal or outsourced) focus on features or the technical implementation and pay no attention to the end user. This is particularly true with Intranet deployments, where developers assume that because the users are 'staff' they know what will work!
This defies the first rule of good usability:
Know Your User. - Designers and developers are often highly technical with skills in programming and other analytical or creative areas. Users, however, act and think in a totally different way that is difficult for 'techies' to understand.
- Web developers are often entranced by Form, at the expense of Function. Web developers focus on what the site will look like, rather than how it will be used.
- In a word, fashion. Web designers love the latest widget and will do anything to incorporate it in their work. In fact, they believe they absolutely must – otherwise they are not at the 'cutting edge'. A terrible example of this has been the explosion of flash animations at the entrance of business-to-business websites. The worst are those that you cannot skip and are forced to watch!
They rarely tell you anything useful and stop you getting on with the job at hand. - Most people assume that good usablity just happens because we all have 'common sense'. In fact, as far as usability is concerned, common sense seems to be in pretty short supply!
Good usability results from many iterations and regular development using scientific and methodical principles over a period of time. - Many people with little or no user-interface design experience are making critical decisions about the look, feel and logical model of websites. These could be either internal management staff or outsourced developers.
