Usability goals are business goals. Web sites that are hard to use frustrate customers, forfeit revenue, and erode brands. Executives can apply a disciplined approach to improve all aspects of ease-of-use. Start with usability reviews to assess specific flaws and understand their causes. Then fix the right problems through action-driven design practices. Finally, maintain usability with changes in business processes.

McCharty & Souza, Forrester research, September 1998

Not even the nascent state of the Web can excuse the amateurish lack of usability of today's eCommerce initiatives. The sites we evaluated demonstrated a fundamental failure to incorporate decades-old principles of software design. But as the novelty of doing business on the Web gives way to demands for basic quality, companies will have to get serious about user experience.

Sonderegger, Forrester Research, December 1999

The benefits of usable technology include reduced training costs, limited user risk and enhanced performance ... American industry and government will become even more productive if they take advantage of usability engineering techniques

Vice president Al Gore, 1998

Evidence suggests that e-retailers who skimp on website design and user testing significant and avoidable losses in revenue.

A.T. Kearney, 2001

On a corporate intranet, poor usability means poor employee productivity; investments in making an intranet easier to use can pay off by a factor of 10 or more, especially at large companies.

CIO Business Web Magazine, 1999