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Web usability includes a small learning curve, easy content exploration, findability, task efficiency, user satisfaction, and automation. These new components of usability are due to the evolution of the Web and personal devices. Examples: automation: auto fill, databases, personal account; efficiency: voice commands (Siri, Alexa, and other artificial intelligence assistants); findability. With good usability, users can find what they are looking for quickly. With the wide spread of mobile devices and wireless internet access, companies are now able to reach a global market with users of all nationalities at any time and almost any place in the world. It is important for websites to be usable regardless of users' language and culture. Most users in developed countries conduct their personal business online: banking, studying, errands, etc., which has enabled people with disabilities to be independent. Websites also need to be accessible for those users. The goal of web usability is to provide user experience satisfaction by minimizing the time it takes to the user to learn new functionality and page navigation system, allowing the user to accomplish a task efficiently without major roadblocks, providing the user easy ways to overcome roadblocks, and fixing errors and re-adapting to the website or application system and functionality with minimum effort.
According to ISO 9241 (Ergonomic Requirements for Office Work with Visual Display Terminals), usability is "the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use". Therefore, web usability can be defined as the ability of web applications to support web-related tasks with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Effectiveness represents accuracy and completeness when users achieve a specified goal. Efficiency is resource cost in relation to the accuracy and completeness. Satisfaction is the comfort and acceptability of use. To attain universal usability for web-based services, designers and developers should take technology variety, user diversity and gaps in user knowledge into consideration. Web usability improvements may include providing a strong contrast mode for people with color vision deficiency. Multilingual websites should offer the same experience to the users. UI Alterations because the language and characters used should still provide the different components of usability.
With many different mobile devices, it is crucial to consider how the users accomplish their task on a small screen. Web usability components should be appropriate for the mobile device. The users should be awarded with a similar level of satisfaction and accomplishment as if they had used a desktop or laptop. According to a survey conducted by Google, users want mobile-friendly websites, especially for research. They found that mobile users value short load times, big buttons and readable text, and simple input boxes. Moreover, if a website is mobile friendly, the users are more likely to return, but they will abandon the website if it is not. Google found that the three most sought-after pieces of information for mobile users are locations, opening hours and contact information. Google has also created an online tool called "mobile friendly test" on the Google search console which allows to check mobile-friendliness of a website. Jakob Nielsen's heuristics are widely adopted in interface design.
It provides expert reviewers with a set of principles to discover usability problems and then categorize and rate them in a quick way. This set of heuristics includes visibility of system status, match between system and the real world and so on. Visibility of system status: the users should be informed by a system all the time that people can make better decisions. Match between system and the real world: the systems' language should be similar to users' language. User control and freedom: It happens many times that users choose the wrong system functions by a mistake, therefore, the system needs to contain the "emergency exit" to give an option for users to leave the unwanted state without any problem. Consistency and standards: the users have to be aware that different words, actions and situations can mean the same thing. Error prevention: System should have a careful design that can prevent a problem that can occur in the first place.
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