The first time I was invited to a formal Western dinner, one thing bothered me is how to apply forks and knives for various dishes. When someone told me that it is not necessary to recognize the shapes of them for application. Just follow the placing order, from outside to inside, a pair for one dish. It's easy!

This experience really inspired me about the application of usability. One would think about design immediately when they hear usability. Actually, design is only a part of usability. From the above example, we found that usability is the way of presentation. If those forks and knives are mixed together, you probably can't figure out which one is used for appetizer and which one is for main dish. I guess most of us encounter this problem, so we need to deal with it.

Redesign the forks and knives, it's fine but take too much time to achieve. The economic method is wise organizing the presentation of forks and knives in the table. Since the dishes will be served one by one, different pairs are applied respectively. Placing them from outside to inside, then users don't need to recognize, remember and can use them appropriately.

Back to the web, we often come across many clients with such responses to our services, "We know that usability is important, but we have already publish our site. We can't afford redesign our page or site in this period." Yes, redesign, revamp your site is the best way to achieve better user experiences, but not the only solution. I just want to point out that sometimes better user experiences is not achieved by visual design, it comes from arrangement and presentation.

Some clients complained that important information was ignored in the page. I would review this problem from two perspectives: content and location. First of all, is it wrote into sort of important information? If the content is alright, and think about where you locate this information. Top right corner of the page is the good place to attract user's attentions. I probably would suggest clients to relocate it before rewrite, cause it saves time, and also money.

Other clients were disappointed by the low conservation rate of registration. Registration is the issue of web form design, we would discuss more later. When the long long registration form displayed, I usually asked clients to make it shorter. Most of the cases, the clients would argue that they really need members to provide those information. No input box could be deleted, then we need to arrange the order of those inputs and make sure users could complete the registration plus provide the information. The following is the suggestion:

Basic info for registration >
One more step to get confirmation email >
Provide personal information >
Success

Dividing the previous registration form into different pages was the appropriated solution. Since users would be more patient for fewer input items with page changing frequently, rather than stay long in the same page.

From above examples, you will find that we didn't put too much efforts to achieve better experiences, just rearrangement. So, next time you feel confused of your website, maybe usability could help more than your expectations.