Usability in website design is the most important aspect. With the importance of the Internet in business, and the impact a web presence can have on a business's productivity, an unusable or confusing website can make or break your company's success. For this reason, it is essential to make sure your company's website is readable and easily navigated while containing all the information you want it to possess.
Processing Orders
If your website sells a product and customers cannot figure out how to select and purchase that product, you will be losing sales. For a small business, every sale counts. To make sure that you don't lose out on sales, you must ensure that your website clearly identifies all products and contains a picture of each item, detains the specifics of each piece, and contains a clear process for choosing, paying for and shipping the item.
Detailing Your Business
If your business offers a service rather than a product, your website must still be clear in what that service is, your fees, how to hire you and how to contact you. Again, your site must be navigable and easily readable or you may lose out on customers. Usability is key no matter how in depth or simple your website and no matter what product or service you offer.
Contact Information
Your website should clearly identify how and when to contact you with questions or to hire you. While you do not necessarily need an entirely separate web page for this information, you must make the site usable so that a customer knows where to go for this information. Without this, you may lose out on customers. Additionally, if your company provides a product, you should put where you will next appear with that product so that customers can find you at your next location. Here again, an unusable or unclear site can make a customer frustrated and unable to find you to purchase your product or service.
Referrals
A usable website will also make it easy for potential customers to find reviews of your company or for previous customers to leave reviews of your work. For a small business, word of mouth can bring more customers to your door than even the most extensive and well-funded marketing campaigns. A usable website will also make it easy for a former customer to send information about your company to someone she knows is looking for a provider of your service or product.
Business Expansion
A usable website is an often overlooked tool to helping you expand your business. With even a small one-time investment, the number of customers your website will draw in if it is usable can be much more than you expect. By doing next to nothing, your business will expand. An unusable website, however, can put off customers or even detract from your business and thereby impact your ability to grow. This means a limited income and cash flow, making it more difficult to purchase new supplies or equipment to grow your company.
