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Usability Testing and Design
How usable is your site?? |
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The secret to selling on the Web
This seems obvious, but judging by the vast majority of today's Web sites it's not: Make it easy for prospects to buy. Make navigation through your site intuitive, the key specifications and prices of products and services obvious, and ordering a no-brainer.
Why usability is important to you:
- In a study of 8,600 Web-using households, Forrester Research found that 67% of users cited ease of use and 59% cited download speed as reasons for continuing to return to Web sites.
- In another study, Zona Research found:
- The average Web user will click to another site if a page takes more than eight seconds to download.
- Slow-loading abandonments cost online businesses an estimated US$4.35 billion annually in lost revenue.
- One site studied dropped abandonment rate from 30% to 8% by reducing download time by one second per page.
- Of all the Web sites studied, 84% had pages that downloaded too slowly.
Example:
When office-supply retailer Staples.com relaunched its site following an extensive redesign-for-usability, measured results included:
- 31% decrease in rate of exit from the home page
- 45% decrease in rate of exit from catalog pages
- 67% increase in number of repeat customers
- 80% increase in unique daily visitors in the holiday season, compared to 40% (average) for all e-commerce sites
(Source: MediaMetrix)
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Here are some of the ways ACRO can help you realize the full potential of your site:
- Usability laboratory testing producing documentation of what happens when consumer surrogates complete key conversion scenarios on your Web site.
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Heuristic (expert) evaluation of the usability of your Web site
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Actionable recommendations for redesign to improve usability and conversion rates
- Surveying your customers and prospects to determine what they're coming to your site to find
- Creating scannable pages that lead prospects to the content they've said they want
- Putting the right links in the right places, and making them easily identifiable
- Clearly distinguishing your most important pieces of content
- Making pages readable
- Creating navigation that tells users where they are, how to get where they want to go, how to get back to where they came from
- Keeping contact information and the BUY button in front of users at all times
- Creating indexing and searching capabilities for the non-linear navigation that many users prefer
- Giving your site a consistent look and feel throughout, compatible with the image you want to project to your most valuable customers
- Localising your site for your specific target markets, domestic and foreign (See our Localisation page for more information.)
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E-mail ACRO for a FREE usability assessment:
Let ACRO's professionals evaluate the usability of your current Web site and your information-architecture needs for competing effectively in present and future target markets.
To learn how we can improve the usability of your site, please e-mail us at info@acroglobal-ie.com
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