Website Usability: Even the Best Product Will Fail If It’s Inconvenient to Buy

05.12.2017 | Usability, Design

Dmytro Romanovskyi, Director and Founder of the internet marketing agency Destra

Website usability — or consumer convenience in using a site — is a key tool in internet marketing. Its importance is obvious: 50% of users complain that they can’t find the services they need, even when they’ve already landed on a site that offers them. This can easily be seen as losing half of your potential profit. In such cases, even holding the top spot in search results and having a premium sales department turn out to be meaningless.

This article won’t once again explain what usability is or where it came from. Instead, let’s get straight to what really matters: what can be done with the user interface to increase sales.

Improving Usability with Common Sense

It’s great if a business website loads in under two seconds, is mobile-friendly, free of coding errors, and its sections are structured according to modern standards — but that alone isn’t enough. The technical side of usability is just the foundation on which a sales growth strategy can be built.

The real focus should be on the user — specifically, their behavior on the site. The smartest approach is to show empathy and put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Why did they visit the site? What motivated them? What will they notice first? How can they quickly find and purchase the desired service? What actions are required from them — and most importantly, how can all of this be done in just a couple of clicks, without any instructions?

The primary goal of improving website usability is to increase business profit. To start with, every effort should be made to keep a visitor on the site for more than 15 seconds. If this condition isn’t met, all other efforts are pointless.

If analytics show that visitors are satisfied with the site and stay longer than 15 seconds, you can move on to working directly with the audience and applying marketing techniques.

As for how to keep visitors engaged using technical tools — there will be a separate article about this in the Destra blog. You can subscribe to the blog if you don’t want to miss that or other valuable insights on digital marketing.

In the first few seconds, a user evaluates the page design and forms their initial impression of the website. Next, they explore the navigation and content — trying to find the product or service they want, while judging how quickly they get the needed information. And most importantly — in what form that information is delivered. Vivid visuals, engaging videos, and texts with authentic expert stories capture attention and spark interest.

At this stage, the site is being evaluated not only by the customer but also by search engines. If a visitor leaves within 15 seconds, it’s considered a bounce. And if users don’t stay on the site, then all further usability improvements (such as optimizing the cart or checkout process) become a waste of resources.

To influence a buyer, every page in their journey should include a trigger — a motivator that convinces them to take the desired action (place an order, leave contact details, register, visit a promo page, share on social media, etc.).

At this stage, simple empathy might not be enough — knowledge of behavioral psychology becomes essential. It allows you to adjust your approach according to the target audience and the business niche.

For example, if your audience consists mainly of 30-year-old men and your business sells perfume, you can use marketing built on sensual appeal. If your audience is affluent young women and your niche is luxury mink coats, you can leverage the idea of sparking hypothetical envy among their peers.

Marketing Tricks

A trigger is a psychological technique that taps into basic human instincts — security, sexual desire, laziness, greed, envy, trust — to push a person toward immediate target action.

So, if the technical side of usability is in order, the website design is appealing and matches the theme, color rules are followed, all unnecessary and distracting elements are removed, the interface helps users achieve their goals, and marketing tools motivate them to act — then it’s time to move on to testing.

In online stores, up-sell and cross-sell marketing tools work very effectively. This is when a product page features additional items like “Frequently bought together” or “You may also like.”

This way, a visitor who came for a single product may also purchase complementary items or choose an alternative model. For example, alongside shampoo you could suggest a hair mask, serum, or brush. In a mobile phone store, you could offer cases and screen protectors.

Sometimes, to make these tools work effectively, you need to use special plugins or even connect third-party services. Today, there are plenty of options available, differing in appearance, functionality, ease of setup, and pricing. For online stores, using such tools falls into the “must-have” category — in other words, it’s essential.

Some cloud platforms for building e-commerce websites already include this functionality in their packages. For example, the Shop-Express platform offers these options directly in the admin panel, requiring no additional coding — you just need to configure the products.

Usability Testing

There are different approaches and methods for usability testing. Each type of website and interface has its own specific rules and requirements that can improve performance and deliver real benefits.

The most effective methods include:

Defining key usage scenarios for the interface or the entire site
Conducting user interviews and large-scale surveys with incentives (discounts, subscriptions, etc.)
Testing with eye-tracking tools (heat maps, click maps, and other visual analytics)
A/B testing

Usability testing is such a broad and complex process that it deserves a dedicated article of its own. At the very least, you can run your resource through a checklist of mandatory rules relevant to your website type and try to adhere to them as much as possible.

With usability testing, you can identify:

whether the system as a whole is functioning properly
whether a hypothesis about an alternative interface, design, or content works
problems and ways to fix them
the most effective solution for the site

Usability testing is an in-depth study that helps determine, in practice, how convenient it is for website visitors to achieve their goals using the site.

If independent efforts and testing to improve usability don’t bring the desired results, companies often turn to professionals.

An evaluation of usability issues by external specialists, along with a list of their recommendations, is called a usability audit.

Usability Audit

If a website has issues with the technical side of usability, it makes sense to hire a more experienced developer.

Visual problems and design flaws can be solved by an experienced UI/UX designer. Sales-related issues fall within the expertise of a marketer.

A comprehensive solution to all these challenges at once, however, is something only a digital agency can provide.

Paying a substantial amount of money for someone else’s criticism can be tough on the ego. However, when a detailed report with constructive recommendations lands on your desk, the sting fades. And once the flow of clients, inquiries, and sales starts to grow, full recovery follows.