Web usability: how to improve it with UX research

Good web usability helps you boost your business in many ways. If you suspect that your website could contribute more to your business, don’t wait any longer. Implementing measures quickly can make all the difference in achieving your goals. There is a whole repertoire of usability tests that you can use to quickly identify the most impactful improvements to enhance your business in the short term. Today, we’ll tell you what the most common web usability errors are and how you can use UX research to get the information you need to improve them.

What is web usability?

Web usability is the ease with which a user can navigate, understand and use a website to achieve their goals effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily.

• Effective. The user can complete the tasks they want to perform on your website.
• Efficient. They can do so quickly and with little effort.
• Satisfactory. The website is user-friendly, easy to use and avoids friction with the user.

Usability is one of the factors that has the greatest impact on the user experience, which is a broader concept. User experience (UX) is a broader concept that encompasses all the feelings, perceptions and emotions that a person has when interacting with a product, service or brand. In addition to usability, user experience includes aspects such as design quality, content quality, good website performance, customer service through contact channels, and the expectations and impressions that the website leaves in the user’s mind. Of course, if website usability is poor, the user experience will probably be poor as well.

Web usability. Why do you need it to be excellent?

Good web usability has a direct impact on user satisfaction and business results. When a website is easy to use, visitors feel comfortable, confident and motivated to continue browsing until they complete their mission. That’s why good web usability:

• Promotes conversions (sales, registrations, contacts). This is the most desired feature for CROs in all types of companies. When users encounter no obstacles to completing tasks, they are more likely to perform a conversion action: buying, registering, downloading or contacting you. For example, an e-commerce site with a simplified purchasing process (visible shopping cart, clear steps, short form) converts more visits into sales. Every unnecessary click or poorly designed field reduces the chances of conversion.
• Increase visitor retention and loyalty. Users return to sites that they find pleasant, useful and easy to use. If a visitor has a negative experience, they are very unlikely to return. Thus, a blog with clear navigation and well-organised content encourages readers to continue reading and subscribe. On the other hand, a chaotic or slow website causes visitors to leave… and look for alternatives.
• Reduce support and assistance costs. When a website is well designed and intuitive, users need less help navigating or resolving queries. And that’s essential, especially if your website is intended for administrative purposes. For example, a public administration website designed for citizens to carry out procedures online, or the incidents section of a utility company. If users easily understand how to complete the process, they will avoid having to deal with the issue by phone or in person, which can lead to significant cost savings
• Improve SEO positioning. Google and other search engines value website usability as an important factor in their algorithms. Experience metrics (such as time on page, bounce rate or Core Web Vitals) directly influence positioning. A fast, mobile-friendly website with a good browsing experience will be better rated by Google and therefore prioritised in SERPs.

As you can see, web usability can help you improve the profitability of your business by reducing costs and increasing your pipeline and sales.

The importance of web usability in e-commerce

We now know that web usability is very important for the success of any website. In e-commerce, web usability is even more important. It has a direct impact on turnover. That is why the largest online stores around the world continuously invest in improving their web usability. From large international e-commerce sites to major local stores in our country, they have not got where they are without offering excellent web usability to their users.

To achieve this, it is important to pay attention to all the details. Good web usability is the result of many small design decisions. Perhaps one by one they do not seem so important. However, each one contributes to increasing sales. And together, they can make the difference between success and failure. That’s why e-commerce managers have a lot to gain by improving web usability with UX research. This will allow them to identify improvements, prioritise them, implement them and finally assess the impact achieved. The successes achieved in one iteration will allow them to obtain new resources to continue improving web usability in the future.

How can you improve web usability?

When a user decides to complete an online task, they will go through a series of stages. Web usability can help you increase the number of users who complete each stage.

• Reaching the website. Good web usability begins even before the user lands on your site. A well-structured and accessible website, with clear titles and easy navigation, will improve your SEO and make it easier for users to find you on search engines. You also need to pay attention to technical aspects such as loading speed and mobile device adaptation, which are also very important for search engines.
• Choosing your website to interact with. The first impression users get of your website is the most important. It determines whether they decide to explore your website or go elsewhere that they believe will better help them find what they are looking for. A good first impression will reduce your bounce rate and channel more users towards conversion.
  Registering and logging into your account. This is a very important aspect. Simple forms with clear and concise labels will help with completion. Showing real-time validations and warning of errors in completion will also help. Social registration buttons (e.g. via Google) can make a difference.
• Find what they are looking for. This is where navigation design, information architecture and search tools come into play. Intuitive menus and clear categorisation will help users immediately understand where to find what they are looking for. And an efficient search engine, with relevant filters, will allow them to refine their search by variables that really make sense to the user. That’s why good web usability in this area will get users to move towards conversion and reduce abandonment and frustration from not finding what they’re looking for.
• Resolve doubts or objections. Good web usability anticipates user questions to ensure their steps on the path to conversion. For e-commerce, this means, among other things, having complete and clear product descriptions, including technical details, measurements, materials and everything else necessary for the buyer to feel informed. And on a website for administrative procedures, this may mean detailed descriptions of where to find the information that needs to be entered into the system. For example, where to find the contract number on a utility bill for which you want to make a claim. Or, for example, providing summarised information in simple language about the main features of an online banking product that is being offered for subscription.
• Make conversion hassle-free. It is essential to minimise clicks and steps to make the conversion process simple. It is also very important to provide visual indicators of progress so that users know what step they are on and do not have to go back to check. This will prevent frustration and abandonment due to complications despite being very close to conversion.
• Make payment easy. Payment is one of the most sensitive aspects for users. A complicated or seemingly insecure payment can ruin the entire previous experience. That’s why it helps to offer multiple payment methods tailored to your audience and all the elements that convey trust, such as logos from independent entities that certify payment security.
• Return to the site. Good web usability can help the user return to the website the next time they need to perform the same task or make the same purchase. Therefore, the information that users receive by email after completing their task can help achieve this.

As you can see, there are many points where web usability plays a key role in the path to conversion and loyalty. Let’s now look at how research helps you improve your UX in all these areas.

Understand your users

Before evaluating the details of your website’s usability, it is important to understand your users’ expectations and needs. There are two fundamental ways to obtain this information.

• UX surveys. A questionnaire is administered to a representative sample of users to understand basic aspects. What are they looking for? What are their expectations? What is important to them? Through UX surveys, you will obtain quantitative data that will allow you to make decisions to validate your hypotheses and improve your website’s usability.
• Qualitative studies. These provide you with a deeper understanding of their motivations and expectations. Conduct focus groups to gather information from groups of users who reach conclusions in a guided manner, or organise user interviews to gain an even deeper understanding of individual buyers.

UX surveys and qualitative studies are complementary methodologies. With the former, you can measure, as you obtain data in percentages that help you to understand the relative importance of each factor. The latter are for understanding, i.e. to find out which aspects may be important to users, even if you do not have quantitative data. That is why they are usually combined. Qualitative research is generally done first to identify all the factors that may be interesting to measure. Then a UX survey can be conducted to measure the importance of each one.

Optimise your website usability

Once you know your users well, you can move on to analysing all the details of your website usability that can make a difference.

• Website selection. You don’t get a second chance to make a great first impression. If you want users to fall in love with your website at first sight, the 5-second test can help. Evaluate how users scan the main landing pages of your site and make sure they understand what you have to offer. That way, they will stay on the page and move towards conversion.
• General usability assessment. A first way to assess the usability of your website is to use a SUS usability scale. With this short survey, you can assess whether your site offers an adequate experience or whether it is urgent to invest in solving key aspects of its usability. Comparing your website’s scale with publicly available benchmarks will give you the answers.
• Navigation optimisation. One of the most important aspects of web usability is information architecture. Fortunately, there are specific solutions that help you make decisions. Card sorting tests are ideal for gathering information on how users would organise content in the most intuitive way. And if you have already built your navigation tree and want to validate it, content tree tests can help. Instead of asking users to organise content into categories, they are asked to find specific content in a tree that has already been built beforehand. If many of them fail to do so, the architecture will need to be reviewed.
• Validating the user journey. Whenever a user visits a website, they are trying to accomplish a mission. In e-commerce, we can consider different missions, such as making a purchase, checking the status of an order, or making a return. All these missions are made up of different tasks that can be subject to quantitative usability testing. To do this, the tasks to be evaluated are defined and users are asked to carry them out within a certain time. By evaluating how many successfully complete the assigned tasks, the effectiveness of the site in enabling users to achieve what they set out to do can be verified.
• In-depth understanding of the experience. While quantitative tests show you the areas that need improvement, they may not give you all the information you need to correct them. Thanks to thinking aloud tests, you can gather that additional information. With these moderated tests, you can see how the user navigates to try to complete the tasks and hear live the doubts they have or the barriers they encounter in completing them. That way, you know not only when they encounter difficulties, but also exactly what those difficulties are.

Monitor your website usability continuously

Improving website usability is an iterative task that involves making improvements progressively. That is why some major websites have online user communities that they interview using the most appropriate techniques at any given time. With a permanent consumer panel, you can quickly organise surveys, discussion groups, thinking aloud tests and any type of UX testing. Companies that have these customer panels enjoy agile access to insights 365 days a year.

Improve web usability with We are testers

As you have seen, better web usability helps you improve your business in many ways. At We are testers, we can help you with the UX research you need to achieve this, with an intuitive research platform and a panel of 130,000 users representing all types of users in Spain and Portugal. We also have a team of UX research experts who can guide you through the process or take care of everything for you.

Contact our experts to take your web usability to the next level and improve your business for good.