What is Web site Usability?

Web usability is about designing your web site in such a way that your viewer can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently.

Finding your site is critical but, once found, the site must be easy to navigate and the content must be understandable. Without this the site is pointless.

When visitors reach your site, they want the experience to be a pleasant one. From the speed with which it takes to load the site contents (research shows that if a site takes over 6.8 seconds to load, the viewer goes looking elsewhere for your product or service), to the ease of navigation and the readability and quality of the text and the images used.

Never use frames or framing to lay out your web site .Frames can cause a number of usability problems, namely:

• Disabling the back button in browsers.
• Search engine optimisation issues.
• Bookmarking is not possible.
• Impossible to e-mail the link to someone else.
• Problems with printing the desired web site page.
• Users are turned off by links which do not open, or are slow to do so.