USABILITY EVALUATION

Have you ever watched a hapless user try to work through a site you created? It’s a humbling experience.

But it’s a critical step in any development process. Because when you test the usability of your work, be it a form, a site or a full-blown application, you get the unvarnished truth:

• The form you thought was crystal clear? Turns out it’s murky.
• The button you thought was obvious? It’s camouflaged.
• The process you thought was easy as pie? It’s difficult as hell.

Best of all, in this business climate, where nobody escapes the call to justify numbers and quantify ROI, testing usability arms you with some data you can bank on. Consider, if you will, the following statistics. (They’re real. We didn't have enough time to make up better ones.)

• Fixing a problem in design costs one-tenth the cost to fix it during development and 1/100 the cost of fixing the same problem after release.1
• Staples.com studied and made improvements in the usability of its site. The result:
  • 67% more repeat customers
  • 31-45% reduced drop-off rates
  • 10% better shopping experience
  • 80% increased traffic 2

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1 Gilb, T. (1988). Principles of software engineering management. In Usability is good business.
2 Human Factors International, 2001