By Eada Hudes
Modern website users are a discernible bunch. They expect more than static text and demand more than broken links and poor quality content. Usability should be a major factor when designing, maintaining, and updating any website. Whatever you do to improve website usability, arguably the most important stages are the planning and testing stages. Only with thorough planning can you be sure that you will get all required elements onto the page in a legible and usable manner. Testing allows you to ensure that all of the elements on a page display properly and on all devices, in all browsers, and under all conditions.
Cut Content
Write your web page content, trim it down to around half the size, and then only include images, video, and audio that are essential to help you get your message across and that users will genuinely benefit from. Don’t force audio or video playback on your visitors. It’s irritating and those with a slow Internet connection will suffer.
Use Headings, Subheadings, And Formatting
Remember that visitors expect certain elements of formatting. For example, underlined text generally means a hyperlink, and your users will also expect link text to be a different colour to the rest of your text with visited links to be a different colour again. Avoid complicating matters with underlined text or formatted text that matches link text, if it isn’t actually a link.
Offer Sitemaps and Search
Offer Sitemaps and SearchTop quality, reliable, and accurate navigation are essential to user experience, but they aren’t always enough. Some visitors will head straight for a search function, while a few might look for deep pages using a sitemap. What’s more, a sitemap provides text links to all of your indexed pages so is beneficial for search engines that are crawling your site. Most users will look for a search box in the upper right corner of the screen, and usability tests suggest that, when it comes to size, the wider the better. This enables users to read what they have typed and to ensure that they are looking for relevant pages and information.
Give Your Visitors Clear Feedback
When we hold a conversation in person or over the phone, we use feedback and verbal clues to help lubricate conversation and to keep things moving smoothly. Consider that your website is, essentially, a large conversation that takes place between you and your visitors. As such, this means that you should provide feedback. Let your visitors know when their message has sent successfully, provide assistance if they click on a link to a non-existent page, and not only do you improve user experience but you can also use this opportunity to try and make conversions and to direct traffic flow around your site.
Simple, Uniform Navigation
Navigation is an important on-page element, and without structured navigation your visitors will be left floundering on pages they don’t necessarily want to be on. Most visitors will walk away if they can’t easily find the navigation bar or menu. Avoid Javascript and image based navigation, ensure that the navigation options stand out when compared to the rest of the design of the site or content that surrounds it, and carefully consider the placement of your navigation menu so that your users can easily find it and comfortably use it.
Test
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