Usability consultant peddles the snake oils
A usability consultant traditionally claims his analysis and recommendations can provide improvements for a website that will increase traffic, sales and loyalty for the website. How true is it? Is a website usability consultant worth his professional fee or is website usability simply snake oil?
Let us have a look at the evidence.
Firstly, studies show that an easy-to-use website pleases the website visitor. This is not surprising. After all, we encounter usability problems every day. From the alarm clock that is difficult to set and turn off, to the door handle that swings the wrong way: we are constantly frustrated by a lack of ease-of-use. SO, when we encounter something that’s actually usable, we are bound to be happy. An easy-to-use thing may even give us a good enough feeling about the product and brand to entice us to buy more of them. It’s common sense that something good leads us to want more of it.
Secondly, Jakob Nielsen, the world’s foremost usability consultant, recently found that only 1% websites on the Internet follow basic usability criteria. 1%! How sad. That leads me to the question: where are those usable websites? I do not recall encountering many of them. But I can think of a whole list of websites that I find difficult to use.
It suffices to say that if a website developer actually publishes a website that is easy to use, I will probably love it and enjoy coming back to it. As I write this, I can think of a few websites I do find usable: www.usability.gov www.wordpress.org and www.nzherald.co.nz for examples. I am actually loyal to these websites due to their pleasing-to-use interface. It is true.
The question remains: will the analysis and recommendations provided by a usability consultant get my website more traffic, sales and customer loyalty? I believe so, because I have read numerous studies on the tremendous return on investment (ROI) provided by expenditure on usability evaluation. I say, go look up a website usability consultant and go for it!