Usability is something that is becoming increasingly more important in the construction of our Web sites. However, not many people who design and build Web sites truly understand what usability is.
There are two important components in building a good Web site that should never be overlooked: usability and usefulness.
I’d like to share a site that is a great resource for learning about usability and what you can do to create a more user focused site. The company is called User Interface Engineering. They also run some great conferences if you’re in the market for a good experience in the future.
The other component I mentioned, usefulness, comes down to whether or not you’ve been strategic in the development of your content. If you review your own site or benchmark with others you can easily find tons of content that is taking up valuable time and real estate on a Web site, but, it isn’t really useful to many people. Information is what the Web is all about. I challenge you to take a few moments to review your site and see if there’s something posted there that is taking up time and space that you can get rid of. It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to trim the useless material from your site and begin to regain focus on the things that are really important.
Go ahead. Give it a shot. Let me know how it feels.
