Re: Usability ROI

["Karen E. Black" <kblack_text -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Well, here's a few:

Good online help promotes productivity by reducing support calls. 
Data/orders get entered faster and more accurately. A friendly, usable 
interface allows the user to input more of the right data, more quickly, 
increasing productivity (again). As data integrity increases, orders or 
information are processed more quickly and accurately, making customers 
(internal and external) and suppliers happy to deal with your department or 
company more often.

For a shopping web site, usability increases average order value and 
conversion rate (completed transactions compared to site visits).

You might try visiting a few usability sites: I get a weekly newsletter from 
uie.com (and too many seminar and conference invitations, but that's OK -- I 
have a Delete key), and occasional newsletters from goodexperience.com.

You'd have to do an ROI analysis on the cost of support calls (internal and 
external), delayed accounts receivable, flawed reporting, etc., to get some 
hard figures to present, but it might be worth it if you can become the 
usability expert.

Karen Black in Toronto, usability expert but nobody at work knows it (jes' 
kiddin')

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Is fearr socrú dá dhonacht ná dlí dá fheabhas.
It's better to solve the problem than to improve the law.
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