How usability impacts your system

The simple answer is: people will use it more.

This sounds obvious, but all the knock-on effects include customer retention, 'stickiness', word-of-mouth marketing, better conversion rates and even bottom line improvement of your ROI.

If you've ever bought anything online you'll know the difference between an e-commerce business that has tracked its users' behaviour and altered the way it works to make everything seem effortless, and a traditional business that has tacked a cheap transactional site onto its existing offering without a lot of thought.

The chances are you will have bought the item you were looking for from the easy-to-use site and not from the one that hasn't been thought about, unless there was a big difference in price. and the next time you want something similar, you will look around again rather than use the difficult website.

The same is true of all systems - make them easy for each of your customers to use and you'll get one up on your competition.