OK – so maybe not ‘stalk’. I’m not advocating that you take an unhealthy interest in the people who visit your website, but I would certainly advise that you try and find out as much as possible about what they do once they get there.

For instance, how many visits are you getting? What page do they land on? What % of them only sees the page they land on (also known as a bounce rate)? And how many pages do they view?

All very useful information, but how do you find it out? Well, you need to speak to whoever looks after the technical side of your website and ask them to add the code that will allow you to implement Google Analytics.

Now, Google hardly needs any more publicity – especially not from me - , but if you know of another free and easy-to-use analytics tool then I’m all ears. As well as the code, all you need is a Google email address and you’re good to go. You’ll then know a lot more about your visitors than you did before.

Why is this so useful? Well, for example, take the fact that a lot of people think the most important page on their website is the homepage. As such, they might spend a lot of time and energy on getting this page just right, perhaps at the detriment of some of their deeper pages. But on a lot of the websites I work with, the homepage actually gets a smaller percentage of the visits and pageviews compared to deeper pages on the site. And Google Analytics will tell you if this is the case for your website too, and will allow you to focus your efforts and attention on the pages that will bring the greatest results

So, join up to Google Analytics (or if you want to spend money, another analytics package like SiteCatalyst), and start stalking – ok – start taking a greater interest, in your traffic. In return, they should start taking a greater interest in you.

It might seem obvious, but in order to make your site more usable, you have to define what ‘usable’ actually means for you and your business.

A website can do all manner of things and you need to decide which of these things you want to concentrate on first and/or most. Otherwise you could end up spending a lot of time and effort on developing areas of your website only to find that they aren’t actually that useful to you.

For instance, if you are a school you might want to concentrate on making your homepage as engaging as possible to potential parents, and one that clearly reflects your ethos to them. On the other hand, if you’re selling products through your site, you can probably worry less about your homepage, and more about making sure that your ‘save to basket’ and checkout functionality are as effective as possible.

If you are a church, synagogue or mosque, it might be the case that you are primarily interested in using your website to attract new members to your community, in which case you would want your enquiry links to be as prominent and easy to use as possible. Whereas if you’re an estate agency, as well as good enquiry links you also want to ensure that the property search on your site is easy to use and brings up relevant results.

So, rather than looking at your website and thinking about what could be improved, first of all understand what you want from it, and then change it to make this happen.

When I first started working in usability, my boss suggested that I read Steve Krug’s book ‘Don’t Make Me Think’.

Although it doesn’t run to many pages, it’s an easy read and in my opinion, very clearly illustrates - by its title alone - a fundamental rule of usablity: don’t make your users think.

This is because a website’s navigation is a little like driving – if both are done well, you arrive at your destination without being overtly aware of the journey you took in getting there.

Making a website usable essentially means developing it in such a way that, once your users have arrived, they don’t have to consciously think about what to do next or where to go in order to do it – they simply know.

‘Don’t make your users think’ was the first usability lesson I learnt. Having worked in this field for over 12 months, I am now a proponent of several more rules that I think are invaluable to anyone trying to convert their web traffic and make their websites as good as they can be.

Over my next blogs I’ll expand on all of these, but for moment, here are my USABILITY rules:

Understand what you want

Stalk your traffic

Avoid making an ass of u and me both

Be sold on the fold

It all adds up

Low hanging fruit tastes the sweetest

It’s good to talk

Test, analyse, change, repeat

Yoo hoo, remember me?

I sometimes wonder how other people have ended up working in the field of web usability.

Did they do a degree in human and computer interactions? Is it a career they earmarked after they graduated? Or, like me, did they fall into it more or less by accident?

I was working as a Managing Editor, when it was announced that my division was being restructured and that the company's websites needed a dedicated team to focus on their usability.

It was also decided that I would be a good person to lead this team. Which came as a bit of a surprise, as I knew next to nothing about usability, or websites in general. But it was a welcome surprise, as I was starting to get slightly frustrated with my role as Managing Editor.

It wasn't because of the job itself. I was working with a cracking team of people, and the role required a balance of creativity and organisation that I felt suited me. The source of my frustration originated in the fact that it was very difficult to ever know whether what I was doing was working.

My role had no real key performance indicators - things I could use as a benchmark for success. The publications made money through advertising and not sales, so the number of copies being shifted didn't mean much. And the amount of advertising sold in each publication was as much to do with the combined abilities of our team of account managers, as it was to do with how well the previous publication had been received by the clients who had booked into it.

So the only way I could really know whether any changes I made were successful was through feedback from the people I worked with. Which was useful, but only to a point.

However, when I moved into usability, I realised that I was now occupying a role in which I could very quickly judge the impact of the work I was doing. Because the visitors to our sites could tell me - not directly, but through what they did, or didn't do - which I could track through the analytics package we use.

If I thought there was a lot that could be done to a page to decrease its bounce rate (the number of people who enter a site on this page and leave without viewing any other pages), I could make changes and track the difference they made. If I thought that removing unncecessary fields in a contact form would increase the number of users completing the form, I could make changes and track the difference they made. If I thought changing a link to a button would make more visitors click on it, I could... well, you know the rest.

So, a change in the tracks of my career meant that I can now track the extent to which my work is successful, and continue to make changes until I know I have been. And for me, that's a pretty satisfying career to fall into.

For a long time, I was jealous of people who could describe what they did in one word. If you're introduced to someone and say that you are a doctor, lawyer or teacher, no further explanation is particularly necessary. I, however, have rarely had a job that could be explained in just one word.

For quite a few years, I was either an editorial account manager or a customer care manager, roles that both required a degree of explanation that, even when finished, still left the enquirer none the wiser about what I actually did (don't worry, I won't bore you with a detailed explanation either).

Things were OK whilst I was an editor, as people more or less understand what an editor is - someone who deals with words, in the same way that a doctor deals with bodies, a lawyer deals with laws and a teacher deals with long holidays (only joking - my wife's a teacher and I know how hard they work!)

So for a while everthing in the garden was rosy. But then I switched jobs, started to work in web usability... and now I'm back to using sentences to explain what I do.

The problem is, when I mention the word 'web', people seem to automatically assume that I am either a web designer, or a web developer. But although I work with designers and developers (and wouldn't be able to do my job without them) I fit into neither category.

So, what exactly is it that I do? Well, I can't say it in one word, but here goes:

I look at websites, confirm what their purpose is, suggest changes that will help them fulfil their purpose more effectively, and check that these changes have worked.

(That's quite good actually. I'll try and memorise it for the next social function I get dragged along to).

And you know what? I love it. I really do. And the reason why I love it, is because not only is it possible to really enhance the effectiveness of a website with what are often small and simple changes, but I can also keep on checking and proving that these changes really are working.

I might be back having to spend a minute or two explaining what I do, but I'm no longer jealous of the one-word professions. I'm too busy enjoying what I do.