Most sites fail to deliver a good user experience.

Fast facts on the importance of usability. Consumers respond to it. A positive experience leads to loyalty. Forrester's Consumer Technographics® data shows that 42% of US Web buying consumers made their most recent online purchase because of a previous good experience with the retailer. Business users require it. Commodities buyers recently ranked usability as their top requirement for picking an eMarketplace. Why is ease-of-use so important? In a separate survey, 56% of purchasing managers said that internal resistance held back their eMarketplace buying initiatives. Hard-to-use sites fuel this resistance by frustrating the employees expected to work with them. Firms know they must provide it. In June of 2000, B2C site managers unanimously agreed that ease-of-use was the most important element of their site's design, and would remain so through 2002. And in recent interviews, financial services execs rated usability as the most important contributor to the success of a bank or brokerage site. The Forrester Report: Get ROI From Design, June 2001