[EAS] Web Usability Rates

[pjk]

Subject:   Web Usability Rates

(from CIT INFOBITS -- December 2003)
<http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/>

IMPORTANT WEBSITE PROPERTIES

A recent survey of over 8,000 participants reports that there are
four factors that most influence a website's popularity. In order of
importance, they are: good content, usability, speed of downloads,
and freshness of content. According to a summary of the study in MIT
TECHNOLOGY INSIDER (and reprinted in "The Second Most Important
Property of the Web" by Steven Pemberton, TECHNOLOGY REVIEW,
December 9, 2003), researchers found it surprising that usability
rated so high with users, "not because it is unexpected that users
want sites to be easy to use, but because Web site builders report
that whenever a company wants to cut costs of Web site development,
usability is scrapped or at least postponed. Apparently, people do
not realize that usability cannot be added on later. It must be
built into a site (or a product of any kind) right from the start."
The article is available online at
<http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_pemberton121003.asp>

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Copyright 2003, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Center for Instructional Technology. All rights reserved. May be
reproduced in any medium for non-commercial purposes.

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If you want to know more about Web usability, an issue that also
shades over into groupware issues, see
<http://www.useit.com/>
<http://www.nngroup.com/>
<http://www.usabilityfirst.com/groupware/cscw.txl>
<http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html?>

    --PJK