Why is usability considered to be a luxury?
Yes, a separate usability campaign is still considered a luxury, because clients undoubtedly feel that their web agency should have made the site inherently usable during the design and build. We've seen a similar situation in the SEO market, where the agency has assured the client that the site is search engine friendly and when we look at it we can see that some efforts have been made, but it's not fully optimised, or uses techniques that are either out-of-date or bad ethical practice.
But what a lot of SEO companies and their clients don't realise is that making a site search engine friendly also helps to make it more visitor friendly. In fact, both usability and accessibility are natural by-products of the SEO process. This not only saves time and money on the optimisation campaign itself but can make a real difference to the site's overall performance, in terms of the cost of customer acquisition, revenues and return on investment.
In short, an optimised site isn't just easier to find, in order to attract qualified traffic, but faster to load and use, easier to navigate, more relevant and content-rich, better connected and more accessible to disabled visitors in accordance with the Disability Discrimination Act.
