Web Usability & Website Optimization

Web Usability and SEO
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Thursday, October 12, 2006

Usable websites rules the web

What is the main differentiator factor in the success of most popular websites on the web?
I think it's Usability!
The backend technology may be same/different, a user will not care about it, what they want is feature rich, fast and simple websites which they can use. “Can Use” factor is very important and it signifies that Web Usability is one of the critical factors in success of a web site.
Let’s take a look at some most popular websites in their own category:

Category: Web Mail
Website: Gmail
User prefer it over other web mail services for one good reason and that is it’s very easy to use, no doubt others are good but isn't Gmail becoming your first choice as your personal web mail client?

Category: Community Portal
Website: Orkut
Orkut is there and everyone likes it, what makes it more popular than other community web portals which are there on the web from a very long time is the easy to use User Interface along with the great features.

Category: Online Encyclopedia
Website: Wikipedia
Fortunately/unfortunately it doesn’t have many competitors in it's category, but not only in its own category, Wikipedia, is one of the most popular websites on www and it's simplicity along with its rich contents is winning hearts, I have already wrote
one complete post on why it's my favorite site on web

The significant thing about all these websites is that they are new on the web but still they have gained enormous popularity on the web. Fortunately other players in the category are waking up and revamping their own websites to stay back in the competition. The most common example of this is the search engines, MSN has come with a good UI and it’s working for them. Rediff, an Indian Web Mail company has also worked on web usability and improved their website significantly.
All I can say is that Web Usability is the making the difference and the difference is good.