One question is to know what Usability is and another is to answer why apply its principles, or in business language, answer the question: what benefits does Usability bring me?
Usability in computer applications
For years, computer science and business management have formed a stable couple with which users fight a battle to understand what they are told or asked for by screens developed by computer scientists, who know a lot about theirs, but about accounting, customer service, billing or warehouse management not so much. And it is the people in those departments who have to deal with designs and requirements that do not always make their work easier.
The end result is usually that employees partially use, slowly and with errors, tools implemented to the contrary: to make their work easier, save time and, ultimately, increase the administrative efficiency of the company.
Usability can help you, a lot, to redirect these situations. With a friendlier computer-person interface, the use of applications is more agile and error-free, and if we add less learning time (cost) to this, the economic benefit for the company is evident.
Usability in Internet pages
Today, the Internet is not essential for a wide group of people and those who become "navigators" (and future on-line customers of companies) requires a subjective but priority factor for them: that it is comfortable and easy. There are enough people with the manuals of the washing machine, television, camera, etc. as well as learning a web page manual. If our page is not intuitive and easy to use, they will go to another or they will end up shopping at the corner store like a lifetime.
Usability provides the essential approach so that the pages of any company or entity are attractive enough so that the visitor not only stays and visits them, but also returns in the future. For this, the design of the pages, their functions, messages and content, encompassed in what is called Information Architecture, must be designed and implemented so that it can be used by anyone.
When we talk about web pages, we are not referring to microscopes for minority groups and technically highly prepared. When we refer to pages on the Internet, we do it (or we should do it…) thinking of users of diverse nature, age, culture and technical knowledge, to all of whom the page should be equally easy to use and understand.
Usability is not that computer scientists know how our page or the order form works. Usability is that the end users (clients) use it even without computer knowledge. It is they, the users, and not the computer scientists who develop it, who are going to buy our products or services.
What are users complaining about?
Of everything. And not because everything is wrong or they don't like, but because of a few elements that annoy or dislike them, they generalize their final opinion. The bad outweighs the good.
But by refining a little we can distinguish some elements of frequent occurrence and of necessary correction:
- Poor content, repeated with other sites and not updated. Slow downloading of the page. Broken or superfluous links. Confusing options and menus. A lot of work ("clicks") to get to what they are looking for. Too many fields to fill. Abuse of Pop-up windows Very small or very large font Unattractive design
Usability Consulting can provide you with preventive measures (in the design phase) and corrective measures (for existing pages) that prevent your visitors from expressing any of these opinions about your site on the Internet.
The aforementioned refers to Internet users and pages, but with some qualifications, it is fully applicable to applications and programs for business use by its employees.
Usability benefits for users
Regarding Internet pages, we can highlight:
- Greater ease of use of the web, which translates into trust. The visitor will return, becoming a customer. Recommend our site to their acquaintances and friends, knowing that they will look good to them.
Regarding business applications:
- Less learning time and greater assimilation of it. Less time for data capture and maintenance. Less errors and the cost invested in their correction. Greater satisfaction in the use of IT tools by your employees.
Usability benefits for companies
Regarding Internet pages, we can highlight:
- Greater satisfaction of users (clients) who will not haggle time to visit our pages Prediction to return periodically without the need to remind them with advertising campaigns Greater predisposition to purchase our products and services Fewer resources to deal with incidents and customer doubts. a business image focused on pampering its customers, taking care of the design and facilitating the navigation of our site.
Regarding business applications:
- Less training time in computer applications Ease of substitutions and staff turnover Fewer incidents, errors and time spent correcting them Lower development costs by establishing generalized design guidelines, reusable in different departmental applications Cost reduction in domestic support systems.
Translate those profits into euros
On the one hand, the cost of serving each client who calls us can be quantified to:
- Send us an order by phone because with the web "I do not clarify". Ask for an order confirmation, which the web does not give. Ask for data that does not appear on the web. Ask how the web works. Complain and tell us "… it seems incredible that a company like you… »
And if all this weren't enough, there's the cost of sales and lost customers who don't even call. They just leave.
In the internal order of the company, we can also quantify:
- The accumulated work when our accounting clerk takes vacation and nobody has 3 weeks to learn the program. The resources dedicated by the IT department (or external billing) in fixing screens that the employees do not "know" how to use. The derived costs of not having the management information at the right time (usually yesterday).
With all these figures, it is now a question of adding expenses by quantifying the cost of the «non-usability» of our applications and pages on the Internet. The investment of converting them into usable is easy and quick to pay back. Often less than 6 months.
