Web usability is crucial to create web sites that users find helpful and enjoyable. If your web site has poor usability, users will leave quickly and may never return.

There are many factors that affect your web site's usability score:

1. Layout
The purpose of a web site is to provide information to the users who seek it. The layout of a page can either help or hinder that user's quest. Most people naturally read from left to right, so positioning more important information on the left of the page and less important information on the right is usually a good rule to follow.

2. Design
The colors and images that adorn web pages serve a bigger purpose than simply providing something pretty to look at. Used properly, they can guide your users through the web site and flatter their interest. Unsuitable colors and images can do the opposite, diverting your users from where they want to go and annoying them.

3. Code
XHTML is your web site's back bone. Writing it according to current standards makes the web site load faster, easy to update, and search engine friendly. Understanding how browsers render that code influences how a developer will write it to make certain the web site appears as the designer intended in all browsers and for all people.

4. Content
What would the Internet be without content? Ultimately, it's what your users are after, so making it easily searchable and scannable is imperative. If you spend 40 hours making sure your page layout, design, and code are perfect, you should also spend 40 hours writing and making sure your content is free of errors and is "webified" for easy reading and printing.

Creative Flavor Inc. is qualified to assess your site's usability and make recommendations to improve it.

Contact us today to learn how we can assess and improve the usability of your web site or other interactive tool.