Selling good usability as a project goal
by David on September 28th, 2007
There is no doubt that usability is incredibly important for most Web sites, yet an alarming number of sites exhibit serious usability faults suggesting strongly they were not user tested and probably not developed with user-centred design practices.
Usability is becoming an increasingly important element of Web design and development, yet why is it such a tough sell?
1. Consequences are invisible - users might be shaking their heads in despair and bailing out of a site within seconds of arriving, yet most usability problems go unnoticed and unreported; if you can’t see a problem, there’s nothing to fix.
2. Clients want click-click-wow! - Web sites typically get judged on very superficial criteria. A great concept and slick design are enough to get a thumbs up and the invoice paid. Like any business, agencies must satisfy their clients.
3. Fun factor for the project team - creativity, innovation and pushing boundaries are undoubtedly more fun than dry boring user-centred design practices.
4. Usability perceived to stifle design - if a project starts with and is driven by a creative process, there will be resistance to user-centred design practices interfering with aesthetics. There is no reason why this should be such a problem. Teams need to work in harmony.
5. Overstretched budgets - what gets dropped when the budget starts to run out? Usability, and documentation are often the first to go. Core activities gobble up budgets which are already eaten in to by client/project acquisition costs.
6. No measurement of success - remarkably, many Web sites are not evaluated for how successful they are. With most other forms of marketing or promotional activity, measuring results is essential. Web sites seem to escape this scrutiny.
What is missing here? Users.
Clients quite correctly assume that when their appointed design/Web agency creates a Web site, the job will be done well, and this includes whatever needs to be done to deliver a successful project.
Taking responsibility
So, if important work like usability (which includes accessibility) and basic SEO get neglected, is the client or the agency responsible?
Few clients will insist upon specific technicalities, never mind conduct due diligence checks. It is therefore up to agencies to ensure that project scope includes work like usability and that budget allocation covers it.
Herein lies the problem: Web sites are more time (and therefore, cost) intensive than most people realise and it is the less visible work which typically gives way when tight budgets are stretched, particularly by expansive agency overheads.
The solution, therefore, is not only to raise awareness amongst both clients and agencies, but also for budgets to be more accommodating. For this to happen, clients need to appreciate the value, importance and scale of their online initiatives, and agencies need to control costs and manage budgets more carefully.
It is not unusual for large proportions of a Web site budget to get consumed by project acquisition costs and creative work, even before the developers have fired up their code editors. This leaves little room for the likes of usability, copywriting, content development, QA testing, SEO, security audits, online marketing…
It is quite understandable that agencies are driven not only by their own creative values, but also by a desire - and business need - to satisfy their clients. Until users, customers and true results start to count more, usability will struggle to attain the level of importance it needs and deserves.
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