Recent studies targeted at web users stress the holy mantra – a usable and accessible website improves eyeball stickiness. A cool dandy of a design doesn’t help much even if you can reach the top of SERP’s if you have not thought much about usability metrics.
Search engine rankings don’t matter as much as conversions. It makes real common sense to take into account those little things that might make a big difference in inducing a sale, snaring a subscriber or building user loyalty.
Know that most users normally don’t read web pages. They simply scan. Arresting headlines, concise bulleted links, colored highlights, useful links, they all add to the big picture of a truly successful site.
Remember numbers represented as numerals often stop a scanning gaze. Use of breadcrumbs fosters a feeling of comfort. How does the shopping experience measure up if it’s an e-commerce site? How fast does your site load? Does it force the user to leave the site as fast as he reached it? Lots of usability factors play a vital role. Andy Budd, well known user experience consultant gives his take on why bad design sticks out like a sore thumb.
I agree with your opinion that web usability rules. Time and again it has been proved that websites which are very user friendly in terms of navigation, content, support, etc., are the ones which have been successful in webspace. It is not longer the cool designs but the entire user experience that counts. Having learnt these lessons the hard way, we can safely say that a lot of effort now goes in making a website from scratch. The intended audience rules. Forget the crawlers and the spiders for a while. Think about the person you want to talk to and give him what he wants. You will then get what you need.
Yeah you hit the nail on the head.