Usability: Critical & Often Overlooked

[Marty Foley]

Usability has to do with making things easy to understand and use, user-friendly.

Problem is, good web usability is commonly overlooked.

I was thinking recently about how there's always room for improvement in usability. Even big companies are often lacking in good usable websites. For example, compare the big 3 pay per click systems:

• Google Adwords
• Yahoo Marketing
• Microsoft Adcenter

Of the three, the Google Adwords interface is considerably more usable than the Yahoo and Microsoft interfaces, which are awkward and clunky.

For highest conversion rates, in my opinion usability should be required study for all Internet programmers, web designers, and webmasters.