Usability has always been a topic that has interested me. There is nothing more frustrating then closing out of a website because you are unable to find what you are looking for in a reasonable amount of time, or even at all. But it’s not just being able to find the end goal; to me it’s about the whole journey in understanding as much as you can about how the user interacts with your website.
Over the course of the program I have thought a lot about usability and even had a project in which we asked three different people to navigate our personal website to see if there are any ways in which we can improve. In doing some more research tonight about usability it dawned on me. We focus so much on first time users and their first encounter with the website, which makes sense because we want to know their interaction with the website, what they’re looking for, why they leave, where do they navigate to and so forth. But what about second time, or weekly occurring users? Is there a focus on measuring their interaction with a website, is there even a need to understand user usage over time? I can understand where this would be helpful between a system and a user that will be using it overtime (job training) but what about website users? Is this something that a web designer and usability personnel should at least have on their radar?
Again, this is a personal opinion post, but I do think that this would be an important topic to discuss, not saying it has to be a focus but identifying if there are any areas or a particular area that returning guests habitually enter or take, to see if any improvements can be made or maybe why they go that specific route is another one not as dependable? Or do we just assume that users who are returning have a great understanding of he website already that there is no need to track their movement anytime after?
— Just some food for thought ..
