Usability; riding shotgun.

Not to toot my own horn, but I know a fair amount about usability. I have been to several of Jakob Nielsen's Usability Week Conferences, I have read more than my share of usability books, and have run several user-response labs. Typically, I am the "go-to guy" for all things usable, because I have the background, and I understand the core responsibilities.

Which is why I am the right guy to tell you that sometimes you have to toss usability out the window.

I am not doubting that usability is important - it is paramount to designing a successful website. But there is a fundamental problem with usability; one that Jakob Nielsen would never confess to. But my sideburns are not quite as large... I am ready to confess the truth. The overriding goal of usability is to ensure your design allows the user to do what he wants in the most simple and intuitive way as possible. Sounds all well and fine. The problem comes when your business' goals are not the same as your user's goals... which is pretty much all of the time.

So who wins? Ninety-nine percent of the time, I would side with the user. After all, he is the one that is paying your electric-bill, so you better make sure you are keeping him happy. But there are instances when you must place the user's designers on the back burner. This is rare; the exception rather than the rule. But you must know when it is time to do so, and then strike as necessary. In a website of a thousand design decisions, you get to make 10 of them, so make them well.

One lesson I am only now learning is to not over simplify your user interface. At CompareBook, we have built some extremely powerful book comparison features; features that put us clearly ahead of the competition. But there is only one problem: no one knows about them. I recently had the opportunity to interview several of our most active customers, people who use the site on a daily basis, and here is the kicker: not a single one of them had any idea about our advanced features.

For the sake of simplification, we hid much of our core functionality (which represented nearly half a year's worth of work) behind a single link, and no one ever found it. That single link, in the name of usability and simplification, has cost us untold business.

Naturally, we are in the throws of rectifying this problem, but at what cost? Will our pages be more cluttered? Absolutely. Will they be more difficult to navigate? You guessed it. But will more visitors employ our advanced book comparison tools, resulting in higher conversion rate to loyal customers? Well, that's the hope, anyhow. There is a pretty good chance I will be back here in 6 months, bemoaning this decision, and once again pounding the drum of usability. Only time will tell.

But until then... usability can take the back seat.