Studies on the impact of well-designed websites on business

Question

Are there any studies on the impact of websites in general or well-designed websites for businesses? By well-designed, I mean highly functional, accessible, and usable websites - along the lines of Section 508 compliance. A quick Google search didn't seem to turn up anything too useful, so I thought I would appeal to the SO community for resources. I've seen Amazon's constant evolution toward higher conversions used in a few examples and I'd love some similar data or studies that show quantifiable benefits, financial or otherwise, that make the argument for well-designed sites.

Answer 1

There may be such a study, but you'll probably not find it online and for free. The key is to constantly evolve and look at your web analytics data and relate that to user behaviour. What works in one market may not work in another.

I worked for a high-volume sports paraphernalia retailer and every few weeks the layout was tuned to get the best bang for the buck -- and that changed depending on the popularity, failure and success of each team throughout the season. A lot of attention was made to the checkout process as to make it a simple as possible to return customers, with such things as simple as defaulting to their previous shipping method.

Evolution often takes place using A/B or "multivariate" testing. In these situations "sticky" versions of web sites are shown to users with slightly different layouts. If version A had more conversions that version B, version A became the winner, was deployed and the next factor was introduced.

What works is a combination of SEO and usability. You need to closely watch how people go though the site. It's a fine art and there are firms out there who specialize in doing such work and studies.

Check out http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/