Website usability standards are the benchmark upon which all Web content is analyzed.
Usability rules the Web!
To put it simply, if a user cannot find a product, they will not purchase it!
The Web is the ultimate self-service environment. A user who clicks and scrolls a mouse gets to decide everything. It's easy to change paths and go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are only a click or two away.
With so many choices in virtually any category or niche, why would anyone waste their time on anything that is confusing, slow or doesn't satisfy their needs? It just doesn’t make sense.
As a result of these choices, users have become increasingly impatient and want remarkably insistent on instant gratification. Remember, this is the day and age of ¨Instant Gratification.¨ If a Website is difficult or confusing to navigate, users will go find another that is more intuitive and easier to achieve their desired objectives.
Usability has taken on a much more significant and important role with the proliferation of the Internet and broadband connectivity. Prior to the Internet, manufacturers of products were somewhat protected by the physical separation between their products and their design and manufacturing facilities. Once you bought a product such as a VCR and discovered how difficult it was to do something a simple as setting the clock, it was too late. Packing it back up and taking it back to the store took more effort than just living with lack of usability.
The software industry has had slightly more motivation to improve their products usability, although it took quite a while for many of these companies to figure this out. Most commercial software companies offered support services that were confusing customers. There were the age old help lines where a customer could call and receive help in deciphering the usability problems. Fortunately or unfortunately, companies soon figured out that such support services were very expensive; $30 - $100 per call depending on the complexity of the particular program. They also discovered that nearly half the calls were caused by poor usability.
