How user-centric is your Web site?

If you're looking at the analytics for your Web site and asking yourself, "Why are so many visitors leaving my site so soon after arriving?" or "Why are shoppers abandoning the checkout process before completing their e-commerce transactions?" then most likely your Web site is poorly structured or overly complicated for your visitors. The majority of users that interact with your Web site are humans. That sounds like an obvious statement, but in many cases Web sites are not designed with a human user in mind. The intuitiveness and usability of your Web site and its target audience is often overlooked in the initial design process leading to frustrated visitors and missed sales opportunities costing your business important revenue dollars.

Website usability analysis involves an objective process that evaluates the layout of your site content, the flow of the navigational elements and the overall Web site design to ensure visitors can quickly find the information they are looking for and that the process to access that information is easy to understand. Ensuring your Web site is usable for visitors will help increase your business' productivity and overall return on investment.

While there are many factors that could be associted with Web site usability issues, below is a list of common problem areas that can, in most case, be easy corrected:

• Navigation that is confusing or inconsistent.
• Slow download times for images and graphics.
• Excessive and cumbersome steps to request or provide information.
• Interface design that does not appeal to your targeted audience.
• Layout and organization of content that is contradictory to what your targeted audience expects.
• Frequent site errors, broken links or downtime.