Guest Post for Jye Smith's A Digital Perspective. http://www.jessnichols.com

1. The golden key to websites ...or what I have learned about the web so far

2. Hi, I’m Jess.

3. This guy asked me to write a guest post for his blog.

4. So here it is. (Thanks so much to Jye for this opportunity!)

5. I’m about to graduate from an IT degree.

6. I’ve only been within the web industry for about a year. (And I’m still learning)

7. But what have I learned so far?

8. All websites are only about one thing -

9. Not functionality. (What the site does)

10. Not usability. (How easy it is to use)

11. It’s about the client achieving their business goals.

12. Which can be different things for different websites.

13. It could be profit and revenue,

14. Or achieving lots of site views and spreading information.

15. But there is a key way to achieve these goals -

16. By improving the relationship of functionality and usability.

17. Usability helps people utilise the functionality,

18. So you really can’t have one without the other.

19. Improve this relationship by:

20. Make the core functionality obvious. (They can’t use what they can’t see)

21. Use accessibility standards. (Visually impaired people use the internet too!)

22. Keep consistent with best practices and benchmarks. (So users can use your site efficiently)

23. But stand out from the crowd. (Because clones are boring)

24. And most importantly,

25. Undertake Usability Testing.

26. To determine if the relationship is being achieved

27. It’s all about working together to achieve the goal,

28. Even if you come from different perspectives.

29. Thoughts? Talk to me! @jessnichols http://www.jessnichols.com