On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here?

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

Developing fewer features allows you to conserve development resources and spend more time refining those features that users really need. Fewer features mean fewer things to confuse users, less risk of user errors, less description and documentation, and therefore simpler Help content. Removing any one feature automatically increases the usability of the remaining ones.

Inadequate use of usability engineering methods in software development projects have been estimated to cost the US economy about $30 billion per year in lost productivity.

The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

What we learned is money doesn't grow on trees.