What is Usability

The design of your Web site can be almost as important as the content itself, in the sense that an unattractive design or an un-navigable site will turn off your visitors as soon as they arrive. “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” as the saying goes – but people do judge Web sites based on the first page they see on screen.

Probably the best way to get an understanding of what kinds of designs work best is to spend some time surfing the Web. That is the strategy we’ll take in this chapter. But in overview, we can make several observations about what constitutes a well-designed Web site. A well-designed site is:

·Well-organized

·Easy to navigate

·Attractive

·Useful

·Up-to-date

Where do I start?

Figure out which page is the “beginning” of the navigation, the page that you expectpeople to see when they come into the web site. Then figure out where you want them tobe able to reach with one click of the mouse button, two clicks, etc. This will define your“main navigational links” and the “subsequent links”, the street signs that tell them howto reach the other pages on your web site.