There is a definite link between website usability and customer satisfaction, especially for e-commerce websites. When customer satisfaction converts to customer loyalty, one can assume there is going to be a long-term relationship between the business and customer, providing the level of service stays the same. So if this is true, have you ever considered to what extent usability influences customer loyalty?

Essentially satisfaction and ease-of-use will ensure repeat customers for your website and positive word-of-mouth. Usability can be explained as the quality of a user’s experience when interacting with a website. Your website’s usability score can be measured through the System Usability Scale (SUS), a questionnaire that determines how well an interface serves its users. The questionnaire comprises 10 questions and yields a score in the range of 0 – 100.   According to Wikipedia the measurement of usability focuses on:

- Effectiveness: Can users successfully achieve their objectives?
- Efficiency: How much effort is expended in achieving those objectives?
- Satisfaction: Was the experience satisfactory?

Positive word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools and it is generated based on your customer’s brand experience. The customer experience can either be in-store, face-to-face, over the telephone or on your website. Since there are so many customer-brand touch points it is important to cover all your bases.

As part of your web strategy a goal can be to increase leads and sales through your website but, that being said, it is important to not focus purely on making the sale. Repeat customers contribute to the success of many businesses therefore it is important to attract visitors to your website, provide them with what they are looking for quickly and easily and make the experience memorable so that they will come back and tell others about their experience.

Some usability factors that can influence a user’s experience include:

- Page load time
- The website’s overall look and feel
- Easy navigation
- Informative content

Read more in Why You Should Invest in Good Development.

According to eMarketer.com mobile apps are set to do better than social apps in 2010 with the iPhone being the platform of choice followed by Android. I find mobile apps especially useful when travelling and, keeping this in mind, I’ve decided to look at a few apps that might be useful to visitors to South Africa during the FIFA World Cup.

ShoZu

Share content easily with Shozu to a wide variety of social websites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Twitpic to name a few. This app is available for many different types of handsets, check here if the app is compatible with your phone.

A virtual cellar: Drync Wine

Whether you are a wine newbie or connoisseur Drync Wine for the iPhone is the perfect wine partner. Drync acts like a virtual cellar with reviews and ratings for over 800 000 wines. With integrated Twitter access, you can easily share your wines of choice with your followers. Buy Drync from iTunes for $3.99 and add all your favourite wines to your virtual cellar list. This is the perfect app for foreign visitors who want to try out the Western Cape’s famous wine routes.

Pano

This app for iPhone allows you to take “beautiful, seamless panoramic pictures” straight from your phone. Panoramic photos are created by taking multiple shots and then stitching them together in the app. No additional software is required. Pretty cool!

fring

Perfect for staying in touch with family and friends while you’re away, fring is an instant messenger mobile app. Social networks that work through fring include Skype, Google Talk, Twitter, Yahoo, AIM and MSN Messenger. You can also use fring to make affordable local and international calls via Skype.

amAze GPS

amAze GPS offer users turn-by-turn navigation and the latest, most detailed maps. Additional features include a 3D bird’s eye view over detailed satellite imagery in major cities. The app is available on a number of handsets and subscriptions are either $3.99 on a monthly basis or $33.99 per year.

Any favourite apps you would like to share?

Many Facebook users have complained in the past about Facebook’s limitations on picture size and many have asked Facebook to upload photos near full resolution. Users will be happy to hear that Facebook announced yesterday that they are slightly increasing the size allowance for photos that are uploaded. On the other hand, they are decreasing the size of profile pictures.

The roll-out of the new features will start today (Wednesday, 20 January) and according to Facebook all users should have access to these features within the next three weeks. The size of the largest photo a user can upload will increase from 604 pixels to 720 pixels and the dimensions of profile pictures will be decreased from 200 pixels by 600 pixels to 180 pixels by 540 pixels. However, even though the size of the images has increased, they will still be too small to print decent quality photos.

What does this mean for developers?

If you developed a Facebook application that queries the photo FQL table or are using photos.get to return information about photos you will need to update your styling to suit these new sizes.

What do you think about these changes?