For years every successful business has built its success by providing users with the products and information that are important to their customers and users. The successful business teams have figured out what is important to their customers by continually asking them for inputs and feedback. Most importantly, the successful businesses listen to the feedback and act on it. GE does it; Microsoft, Sun, and AOL do it. And so do many of the other successful companies across the world.

When it comes to Web sites, the team first needs to have a common focus on who are the target users for the Web site and why they would visit. Once this is written out and shared across the team, improvements and testing can be gauged against the team's vision. Next there should be a regular program to gather and track the users' experience while working with the site. Web sites evolve at a rapid rate and the team needs to have a long-term memory to track what they did in the past and how well it worked versus the improvements that have been made. Also, whenever possible you should do competitive studies to ask users what they think of your competitors' Web sites versus your Web site. The team can then pick out the best ideas from the answers.

Users are one click away from leaving your Web site

There are a number of methods and techniques to improve your knowledge of what users think about your site. Some are easy and inexpensive and some require a moderate budget and some can take a large investment in time and money to accomplish.

Unsolicited User feedback - First, if you have a site, make sure you invite users to send you feedback. While few users take advantage of this, people do use the feedback mechanism to tell you if things are broken on your site. When a link or feature is broken, most users will move on to something else on the Web, but some will click on an easy link to send you feedback. Make sure your team captures these comments and also sends back a thank you note. The cost is just your time to monitor and respond to the feedback.

Surveys - These take a bit of work to ask helpful questions. At the low end of the cost range there are Web-based applications that will allow you to implement and run a Web based survey for several hundred dollars. More typically, a well-run survey conducted by an independent firm will cost in the $10,000 + range. With a survey, the users are taken out of the mode of using your Web site and are asked their reactions and opinions based on previous experiences with your site. Typically these surveys would involve interviewing a large number of users (50 to several hundred) to document profile questions and usage areas. Then you would receive a set of graphs and charts showing the users' responses to the questions you created. The results greatly depend on the questions you ask, how you ask them and how you track the results. For example there is a normal bias on how users will respond to questions and you also have to understand how the responses your survey received compare with a normal baseline. An example is if 65% respond that they like your site and the normal bias is 75% of the surveyed people like a Web site, then you have a problem. The timeframe to build a good survey project is several weeks and the budget typically can require $15K to $30K.

Online usage profiling - There are now new software tools that allow users to provide detailed feedback to Web site teams as they use a Web site to do typical tasks. These services works by having a panel of users doing real tasks on your Web site, or your competitors' Web site. As the users work with the site, the software tracks the pages they view, how long they are on the page, and their written feedback and comments they provide. With this resource, the team now has detailed information on what pages are actually used by users to accomplish tasks. They can see if users scroll to look over the page or not, and what the user feedback and reactions are as they use the pages across the site. This information is available in online interactive reports available to the Web site team. The big advantages here is the Web site team is collecting detailed usage information as people really use the Web site from their home or office, where they are normally using the Internet. As you get 8 to 15 users doing the tasks you will quickly see what areas are frustrating for them and what areas are working well. This can quickly help a team zoom in on the areas that are most important. What is of particular value is that this approach allows the Web site team to gain insights on what users like or do not like, as well as why they will or will not use the site again. Also, this process has been developed specifically for the fast response and turnaround needed for today's Web sites. Web sites can now include direct user feedback in a continual process of improving the Web site effectiveness and ease of use. The time frame for doing this type of usability testing is typically 2 to 3 days and costs start at about $3,500. As the Web site is improved, tests can easily be re-run to track improvements. Two companies that provide this new testing service are SiteUsers.com and Vivadence.

Focus Group Sessions - This approach brings a small, selected people into a site where you watch them interact with your Web site. Critical factor here is having a skilled and knowledgeable interviewer to work with the users. Typically the interview process will run for 1 to 1 ½ hours. Users will need an incentive ($100 is typical) to come into your interview site. Typical usability lab projects will require a budget starting at $5K for a straightforward project interviewing 10 people. A more complex project will require a budget of $30K to $50K and will include a larger number of interviews as well as more complex questioning of the participants. These surveys will be done in a controlled environment where everything is set up correctly. The sessions are video taped and transcripts of the sessions are typically made available to the client. The timeframe for this type of testing is usually several weeks to complete a project and generate the reports for the team.

Observations on the art of making a site usable

Clutter - What causes people the most problem with a Web site? Clutter! As we have done Web site testing for clients, we see time and again, that Web sites that appear confusing and cluttered to the users, have problems holding the user's interest and attention. When the Web site has a clear interface, users can easily and quickly find the resource or information they came to your site for. When the Web page is cluttered or confusing the users will try and find the information they are looking for and if it is not obvious then they move on to another page or another Web site. My personal rule of thumb is that key features have to be obvious to a casual observer.

Organization - Your Web pages and Web site have to be clear and easy to understand, even when you are not around to explain things. You cannot assume users will read your information. This means that the pages have to be clear and easy to use without spending more then 10 seconds to figure out what you have gotten. From watching the time users spend on a page, the Web site will be losing folks after 10 to 15 seconds. That may not be fair to the creative work, but it is the reality of how users are behaving when we observe the real behavior with Web sites from the home or office.

Web site colors - Now here is an area for great debate that has little impact on the Web site usability for the most part. The color palette of the Web site has to be one you are comfortable with. But, do not spend endless hours debating the color pallet. First, users care about having information easy to find, and as long as the colors do not confuse them then the colors are OK. Next, you really do not know what your colors are going to look like on anyone else's system. Nearly every monitor or laptop make "adjustments" to the perceived colors that you will not be able to predict. There is one major area of color choice that should be treated with care. Colorblind folks do not see the shading differences between reds and greens. If your site depends on users seeing a color difference to find information or buttons, make sure they are clear to everyone.

Forms - Time and time again users are confused on what is required and what is optional. Web sites that make their forms clear and easy to work with have positive user experiences. On the other hand, when users hit an error after filling in a form you need to tell them everything they need to do to correct the errors. It is very clear that if a user gets an error page two or three times they will give up and go off to something more worthwhile. Many Web sites today still process the form one field at a time. These sites reject the form and throw up the error page on the first problem. If the user is going to have multiple errors, this method will lose them! While some users may stick it out, most will leave the site. We had one user going through a page and then hit an error page some 20 times before giving up. That is one rare determined user. You cannot count on all your users being that persistent.

An Ongoing Process

Whatever method you choose to use for managing the development of your site, you need to have a regular program of gathering user inputs into your development and release cycle. The recommended cycle is to identify the critical areas from the user feedback, fix and improve them, release the improved site to your users and then retest. What is great about Web sites today is this whole cycle can now be implemented in a matter of weeks. Users can benefit from the results of your work very quickly. Now your team has the potential for delivering a continuously improving Web site focused on making it as effective as possible for your users.