Here are some of the ways your organization can benefit from a more usable web site or application:
- increased customer convenience
- increased productivity
- lower customer support costs
- decreased development time and cost
- more successful transactions and fewer abandoned attempts
- increased customer loyalty
Why does usability increase profitability?
Web sites and software applications are built by highly skilled software developers. But developers focus on functionality and functionality alone is not usable. Applications can be - and often are - loaded with functionality that no one can find or understand. This represents a significant risk to an investment in any development project - either web site or desktop application. If it's not usable, that investment is wasted.
The solution
There's a missing ingredient: Usage context. Developers are not well positioned to know how users think and behave. They require additional information about how users work. At the same time, users aren’t well positioned to tell developers what they need, because they will always focus on immediate problems rather than the over-all design.
Functionality is like an orange traffic cone. By itself it has little value. But when placed in its proper usage context it can be a lifesaver!
