Usability ROI Declining, But Still Strong

Typical Business Metrics

The average business metrics improvement after a usability redesign is now 83%. This is substantially less than 6 years ago, but ROI remains high because usability is still cheap relative to gains.

• Conversion rates such as sales or lead generation
• Traffic numbers such as page view statistics
• User performance such as the time needed to perform key tasks
• Target feature usage such as the number of users who click a link to crucial information

Why Usability Is Improving Less

• Many of the horrable websites that used to dominate the web have been worked on and improved significatly
• Web pages were so bad that many of the slightest changes led to great improvements
• Although usability budgets have not increased from around 10% it seems many are making more better use of of their money by implimentling a higher level of usability

The Loyalty Decade

The formula for website success is:B = V × C × L

• B is the amount of business done by the site
• V is the unique visitors coming to the site
• C is conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who become customers); note that the concept of conversion applies not only to e-commerce sites, but to any site where there is something you want users to do
• L is loyalty rate (the degree to which customers return to conduct repeat business)

Implementation

It is very important to keep my site simple and constant. As I design a website I will keep in mind unique customers. Websites will very accross the world. I need to remember that I have a specific group that will see my site. I need to make it appeal to them.

March 15, 2008