Bean Blog

If you do not include usability as part of your design process, your website is destined to spend a lot of Friday nights alone.

Your website’s potential suitors, er, visitors are very fickle people. They are not interested in entering into relationships with attractive websites with nothing to say nor are they willing to dig around on a site for meaningful conversation. They expect nothing but the complete package – a website that is pleasing to the eye, is smart and intelligent *and* has a good personality.

How do you help cultivate this true love? By not ignoring your users. They are unique. They have likes and dislikes. Needs and wants. Hopes and dreams. Okay, maybe your site cannot help your users attain their life’s dreams, but it can fulfill a need that brought them to your site in the first place. But unless you have identified that need, your site will fall short and force your user to look elsewhere for happiness.

Puns aside, it is user experience that will determine the success or failure of an online endeavor. And user experience will be determined by more than your stunning graphics. It is how information is presented and how your user interacts with it. It is navigation and how your user finds content. It is delivering a site that is both visually appealing and thoughtfully constructed.

So before you get your website all dolled up to go out on the web, be sure to take the time to find out what your users want and need… it could be the difference between a fairytale romance and lamenting “the one that got away.”