TABLE OF CONTENTS The particularly critical value of usability to the ROI of Web sites and Web-enabled applications is illustrated by the following case study.
A contract development team was building a Web site for a client organization. The Web site was to include up-to-date drug information and was intended to be used by physicians as a substitute for the standard desk references they currently use to look up drug information such as side effects, interactions, appropriate uses, and data from clinical trials. The business model for the site was an advertising model. Physicians were expected to visit the site regularly because it offered more current and more easily found information than the published desk references (such as The Physician's Desk Reference, or PDR). The marketing plan was to have pharmaceutical companies buy advertising for their drug products on the site because the visitors to the site (physicians) represented their target market. Regular and increasing traffic from repeat visitors, and new visitors joining based on word-of-mouth amongst physicians, would drive up the value of advertising, generating a profit and ROI for the client.
The development team generated a prototype design that the client would use to pursue venture capital to support the full-blown development and initial launch and maintenance of the site. The client paid for this prototype development.
Once the prototype was ready, a usability engineer was brought in to design and conduct a usability test. Eight physicians were paid to fly to the development center and participate in usability testing. Several...
