Are new web sites user-friendlier? 
No, they're not. Recent tests show that the situation hasn't really improved during the last years. Sure, the glaring usability problems, especially those discussed in the Belgian Web Usability 2002 Report, occur less and less frequently. Flash intros, moving text zones and forms and search features that don't work seem to be disappearing slowly. But unintelligible terminology, complex navigation systems, complicated search features and bad links are still very much a reality.

Why not? 
The Internet is still relatively young and it's logical that there's been a fair bit of experimenting going on those first years. What a lot of companies don't seem to realise is that, when it comes to making web sites, the experimental phase is over. Web builders big and small still try to dazzle customers with their magical one-stop-shop-solutions: they design your site structure, build it, make the analysis and develop the marketing strategy. A tall order because making a good web site is anything but easy.

What's quite striking is that a lot of Internet companies profile themselves as architect and builder, designer and executor. In just about every other sector the conceptual phase and the executive phase are completely separated. Or does your printing company write the texts of your brochure? Even the large consulting firms have realised, with a little help from scandals like Enron and Lernout & Hauspie, that giving a company advice and implementing that advice are two things best done by two different companies. Not just because those two things require different knowledge and skills but also because it prevents the advising company from abusing its power. A company that writes an advice in the knowledge it will be hired for the implementation of the advice can be empted to put its own - financial - interests first instead of the customer's.

Usability is a discipline in itself. Usability and information architecture are totally different than web building. Not more difficult, just different. Building a web site is like building a house. Everybody involved in the project has their own job and responsibilities: the architect draws the plans, the contractor hires specialist subcontractors for framing and roofing and the like and the architect supervises the whole thing. Nobody in their right mind will hire a bricklayer to draw the plans or ask an architect to take care of the roofing. When you're building a web site, a similar task division applies. The usability expert can be compared to the architect; he draws the blueprint of the site, designs the information architecture (what's in a name?) and determines what goes where on the web site. The web agency is the contractor who turns the blueprint into something concrete.

The independence of the usability expert cannot be overestimated. A usability expert has to operate completely independently from web builders, graphic designers and IT specialists. Only if a usability expert has no benefit whatsoever in labelling a site user-friendly or not can he be truly objective. Making a web site and evaluating the usability of it are two things that should be completely separated.

Els Aerts & Karl Gilis