I got an email from a client today, I’d been discussing how to improve the sales on her e-commerce site. This line jumped out at me:

I feel the site is already extremely easy to use and navigate

And it is. It’s a perfectly nice site, there’s no major usability problems with it. Perfect? No, but no huge problems. I’m sure a usability study done on her site would show up a few problems and areas for improvement, but wouldn’t be damning.

But is usability all it’s cracked up to be? There’s many different types of usability studies, but the most common is to get users to complete a series of tasks (such as buying an item) and see how  far they get, what roadblocks and problems they encounter, and so on. And that’s great stuff. It’s important to get them able to do the task.

However, a good e-commerce site is more than just about being able to do something. It’s about your customers wanting to do it. It’s about motivation. For example, a blue “Add to my shopping cart” button and a red one are just as usable as each other. In fact, you might even argue that the red one is more usable as it stands out more. However, in just about every test done, people are more likely to click on a blue button than a red one. This sort of thing doesn’t show up in a usability study. The site is equally usable whether red or blue, but it’s not equally desirable or convincing.

So, usability helps get rid of the barriers, but that’s only half the story. If you want help with either half of the story, but mostly the second half, perhaps I can help.