Usability has a commercial impact

According to an earlier article in Internet Retailing, some three-quarters of consumers say that bad usability on a company website has put them off dealing with that orgainisation.

The principles of good website usability have been around for some while, led by people such as Jacob Neilson from his excellent site (http://www.useit.com/) and Jesse James Garrett . The simple rules are there to be followed, some of them include:

• Try to keep you navigation options to around 7
  (There's a very good reason for this and its to do with human short-term memory capacity and other sensible stuff!)
• Tell users what's about to happen and then make sure it happens in the way they expect
• Build your site for the lowest common browser/device, not the latest or greatest (therefore JavaScript is there to enhance functionality, not to break the site when its not used)

I'm therefore amazed that poor website layout and design is such a problem in today's modern eCommerce world. But then I'm also suprised we still have: global poverty, no cure of the common cold and Nylon used to make shirts. As I've previously stated, you can significantly influence your users by providing a positive user experience on your website, but this is the first research I've seen in a while that says a bad User Experience negatively effects the impression that people have of that company.

Social Media changes marketing & usability

If you're planning on advertising on social networks, you've probably already heard ort read that CPM's are incredibly low. Indeed, if you read Alex Nesbitt of Digital Podcast's thoughts, he believes that Google AdWords can be 100 times more effective than adverting on social media sites.

The argument has been made frequently that tracking CPM's and building communities are two entirely different things. Search and content sites are better for quantitative marketing and communities provide better qualitative understanding, providing insight into product / service improvements (see my previous post on ROI of Social Media for more)

Having spent years working with large companies to build usable websites , I've been a fan of the work of Jesse James Garrett, one of the pioneers of web usability. He basically stated that the web browser provides two different functions:

1. A hypertext system (content & search, e.g. Google, BBC, etc.)
2. A software interface (application, e.g. Online Banking, etc.)

His original diagram explained the ' basic duality' and the ways to deal with the specification and development of these two paradigms, from Abstract to Concrete & Conception to Completion.

But is this the entire picture? Well I have a theory its not and that we're missing something here.
I think that social media (discussion forums, blogs, etc.) actually create a place between Mr Garrett's two purposes. They create a 'third space' that combines both the content of the hypertext system and the application functionality of the software interface. Its this third space that's confusing, because the interface isn't just one thing or the other:
Its not just about look & feel, its about elements & navigation. Its not just about getting instant gratification and clicking'next' to the following page, its about interaction and engagement whilst your on that page.
Perhaps we need a new diagram Mr Garrett?