The word usability means just what it says, it refers to the study and practise of making things, web sites in this case, more usable.

To put this in context, everyone has had negative usability experiences - experiences where achieving your task was made difficult or impossible by a poor design. In an ideal world everyone would make usable web sites just because it’s the right thing to do. But we’re not in that world, so here is a more concrete reason: poor web site usability leads to a negative user experience which harms the perception of your company and impacts your bottom line.

If I visit www.acme.com and can’t figure out how the site works and where I go to order the AcmeCom widget I want then I get frustrated with AcmeCom. Next time I don’t go to acme.com, I go to their competitor FriendlyWidget.com instead, because their web site allows me to do what I need to do with the minimum hassle.

As a concept usability is deceptively simple, Jakob Nielsen (a big name in usability) defines it as ‘Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use’. However in practise designing and producing a usable web site is a complex and nuanced task, and all too many site designs to not live up to the task.

Carefully assessing and applying solid usability guidelines to your web site can mean the difference between a successful site and one that doesn’t live up ti its potential.