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January 14, 2000

Web-Site Usability:
Usability On The Web Isn't A Luxury
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Most Web sites today are tough to use. Usability studies typically find a success rate of less than 50%. When the average person is asked to accomplish a simple task on the average Web site, the outcome all too often is failure.

Why is the Web so successful if the average user experience is one of failure? Mainly because few sites work--at least from the perspective of their users. Even though 90% of Web sites are obviously poorly designed from this perspective, people spend only about 10% of their time on them. As soon as they discover that the site is filled with bloated graphics and little useful information, they go elsewhere. Worse, they're unlikely to return. If a site crashes their browser, they just don't go there again. If they can't find the product they want, they will go elsewhere--and they're apt to stick with the site they know works.

The initial visit to the site is triggered by the advertising budget or other promotional links. When people have a positive user experience, they are apt to return, and you get useful exposure, if not revenue, from your ad dollar. When they have a bad user experience, they are likely never to return--a complete waste of money. Over time, people gravitate to sites that treat them well and are easy to use.

Consider our experience with shopping for a printer (see sidebar story, "Walk-Through: A Usability Experiment"). Hewlett-Packard and Canon Inc. failed in similar ways. At the home page, they failed to provide links that answer what must be a common question among their visitors: I'd like to buy a printer, but I'm not sure which product is best for me. Assuming visitors had the tenacity to find the page that covered these products, it's close to impossible to select an appropriate printer from the Web pages because those pages are devoid of useful information. On Canon's site, for example, the category of "mobile" printers is the only one that makes sense. Otherwise, how would you know whether you needed a "performance," a "value," or a "specialty" printer?

Advice such as "if you print more than 50 pages per day, select one of these," would have helped users buy. Additional, but useless, information is offered through a "rollover" user interface: By rolling the mouse over the images, you learn that model 6000 is "the smart choice for all your printing needs" whereas model 2000 is "the printing powerhouse you need for all your home or business projects."

Aside from the fact that the information doesn't help visitors differentiate among the products (all products seem to be perfect), this rollover interface is too difficult to find and forces users to memorize the messages as they move from product to product. This site works only for users who have plenty of time to spend on aimless clicking.

Suppose a company has a good advertising budget and a well-designed site. Is this sufficient? No. Studies show that a remarkable percentage of people visit a site, put items into shopping carts, and then leave the site without finishing their purchases. Why would people discard their carts? After all, they've done the hard part--they found the site and figured out which items to purchase, but left when all they had to do was pay.

There are two reasons why people discard carts. Most shoppers like to do comparisons among the alternatives available. They'll make a tentative selection, then compare it with a few alternatives. This isn't easy to do on many Web sites. One way is to remember to open new windows for each of the items to be compared: Most users aren't comfortable doing this. The other way is to dump all the comparisons into the shopping cart as the simplest way of keeping track of the alternatives. If the site doesn't make it easy for people to compare, they will invent ways to do so.

The second reason for discarding the cart is much more fundamental; the payment process is too onerous. Are customers asked unnecessary questions? Does the process get in the way? Is it overly difficult? Is the Web site secure and are customers assured that their privacy is respected (and then, does the site actually do so)? Do the sites provide information about stock availability, shipping, and other extra costs before the purchase process, or is the customer surprised mid-way through?

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