Related essays:
- Website usability guidance
- Website usability
- Web usability
There are principles of good web usability. They are discussed below:
1. Availability and Accessibility
Your site should work when people try to access it for it to be useful. (Batra and Bishu, 2007)
Consider the following for availability of your website:
i. Server uptime (Matsunobe, 2011)
ii. Broken links (Hong and Kim, 2011)
iii. Mobile responsiveness
2. Clarity
The content in any website should be simple and easy to understand. (Federici et al., 2010)
i. Simplicity (Watanabe et al., 2009)
ii. Familiarity
iii. Consistency(Tzvetanova et al., 2007)
iv. Guidance
v. Direct feedback
vi. Good information architecture(Suzuki et al., 2011)
3. Learnability
In case one uses new concepts in one’s design, one should ensure that they are used consistently and give people a hand during the initial learning phase. (Hsieh, 2011)
4. Credibility
It is necessary for one’s website to contain trustworthy information. If users do not trust the content of one’s website, it will be of no use to them.(Matera et al., 2006)
5. Relevancy
The information contained in one’s websites should be relevant to the users of that website.
One should begin by defining one’s users, talk to them to find out what their goals are and define user scenarios that demonstrate in which situation people visit the site to find what kind of content. Any design decision that one makes should result in a more user-friendly website for the users.(Garc??a et al., 2003)
References:
Batra, S., Bishu, R.R., 2007. Web Usability and Evaluation: Issues and Concerns, in: Aykin, N. (Ed.), Usability and Internationalization. HCI and Culture, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 243’249.
Federici, S., Borsci, S., Stamerra, G., 2010. Erratum to: Web usability evaluation with screen reader users: implementation of the partial concurrent thinking aloud technique. Cogn. Process. 11, 273’273.
Garc??a, E., Sicilia, M.A., Gonz??lez, L.A., Hilera, J.R., 2003. A Concept-Based Approach for the Design of Web Usability Evaluation Questionnaires, in: Lovelle, J.M.C., Rodr??guez, B.M.G., Gayo, J.E.L., Ruiz, M. del P.P., Aguilar, L.J. (Eds.), Web Engineering, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 186’189.
Hong, S., Kim, S.C., 2011. Mobile Web Usability: Developing Guidelines for Mobile Web via Smart Phones, in: Marcus, A. (Ed.), Design, User Experience, and Usability. Theory, Methods, Tools and Practice, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 564’572.
Hsieh, H.C.L., 2011. Exploring the Impact of Cultures on Web Usability Test, in: Kurosu, M. (Ed.), Human Centered Design, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 47’54.
Matera, M., Rizzo, F., Carughi, G.T., 2006. Web Usability: Principles and Evaluation Methods, in: Mendes, E., Mosley, N. (Eds.), Web Engineering. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 143’180.
Matsunobe, T., 2011. Gaze Analysis Tool for Web Usability Evaluation, in: Stephanidis, C. (Ed.), HCI International 2011 ‘ Posters’ Extended Abstracts, Communications in Computer and Information Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 176’180.
Suzuki, K., Karashima, M., Nishiguchi, H., 2011. A Study on the Time Estimation Measurement for Web Usability Evaluation, in: Marcus, A. (Ed.), Design, User Experience, and Usability. Theory, Methods, Tools and Practice, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 53’59.
Tzvetanova, S., Tang, M.-X., Justice, L., 2007. Emotional Web Usability Evaluation, in: Jacko, J.A. (Ed.), Human-Computer Interaction. HCI Applications and Services, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 1039’1046.
Watanabe, M., Yonemura, S., Asano, Y., 2009. Investigation of Web Usability Based on the Dialogue Principles, in: Kurosu, M. (Ed.), Human Centered Design, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 825’832.