Do you really know what people think of your company’s web site? Chances are the answer is no.

Topics like mobility, outsourcing and IT security are getting all the attention, so most firms are doing little to assess their “web usability”, as it is clumsily known.

Who to blame? In-house and external web teams must take a lot of the responsibility. The fact is these people have failed to sell the importance of usability testing, so sites get away with murder and no one does anything.

There are two big reasons for this sorry state of affairs: “usability” is a rubbish word; and many firms secretly don’t want their site to be very successful. These factors must be understood by managers if they are to banish crimes against web users.

The list of offences is long, and includes not giving a phone number or easy contact details; not providing consistent navigation; and not applying good design principles that make it easy to work out what is going on.

Some help is at hand, in the books and seminars of US-based web design gurus such as Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug. But the UK needs more than just the occasional flying visits from the likes of Jakob and Steve – especially when they charge $20,000 per seminar. We need someone like the ’effing and blinding Gordon Ramsay to take the boardrooms of this country to task. Firms would be given a week to clean up or face a good public flogging.

The aforementioned Steve Krug sums up the problem with his mantra “Don’t make me think”, which is also the title of his bestselling book.

He has a point. Most of us go to web sites to solve a particular problem. If we have to think about how to get the relevant information for too long, we either go to another site or just give up.

Krug points out that usability tests can be carried out quite cheaply – not for the tens of thousands of pounds that some web firms try to stiff you for. The important thing is to watch people using your site, as often as possible, and to record the findings.

You can do a lot in-house, but good usability gurus are also employed by the leading sites because they understand the politics that militate against good web sites, and they understand design errors. They know that web teams love to do clever things with Flash – even though most users hate such stuff. They also know that most web sites are designed by committee – with all the inherent lack of responsibility that results.

It’s a cliché to say it, but your web site is now your most important interface with the outside world. Period. So your board needs to begin to think and breathe usability and spend more time on the web site than they do checking the firm’s share price.

Good web sites are expensive. But bad web sites cost far more in lost customers and damaged branding. Only when board members learn this will they start giving usability the attention, and resources, it deserves.