A homepage can be useful for the user. And with that I mean that the homepage in some way helps the user with something. But does the site miss usability your visitor won’t stay long on your site. The user might not even understand of useful your site is for him before he leaves your site. This because of that the user has hard to understand how you navigate, find the information he is looking for or your site doesn’t work in his browser. The problems can be many more.

But what is usability then? Well you can say it’s when your user can perform a task without getting a headache.

The important thing is that that your homepage work as it should and lets your user perform his task in an easy, flexible and effective way. A visitor won’t stay or come back if it knows it takes forever to finish his task. The homepage also needs to be easy to understand and remember. Otherwise it will probably be hard for the user to navigate and find what he or she is looking for.

Usability is also how error-safe your homepage is. That means how many errors you have found and fixed that may appear for the user.

But you should not forget that usability is also how good-looking your website is. Your visitors must think your site looks good and that the design fits your genre.

But these goals can easily mess each other up. That’s why consistency decides which goals are important to reach first. For example: A search site’s main goal is to be effective and in working order for the user. An online shop’s main goals would be to be error-safe. Just to take an example.