Design & Usability for Websites

Internet users encounter a website’s usability before they even have decided to use it and more so before they make up their minds on probable purchases. A fact is, the World Wide Web is the supreme setting for empowerment, where the one who is clicking the mouse controls everything.

Search engine marketing is important as generally visitors utilize search engines in order to discover your website. However once they reach your site, they should be able to use your site with ease and understand its content.
Research shows that of 43 million internet websites, only 42 percent are found to be usable.

Evidently, a major measure of website success is its effectiveness in converting leads into buyers. However, recent studies show that 50 percent of website sales are wasted due to the fact that visitors can not locate the content that they need; this leads to reduced web productivity, increased visitor frustration, wasted visitor time as well as loss of visitor’s repeat visits then loss of website money.

Studies done by usability expert’s estimates that by improving your visitors’ web encounter, it increases your buyers by about 40 percent and also increases overall amount of orders by 10 percent.

A fact is, internet users do not like to wait, more so learning how to go about using a hard to navigate home page. Individuals need to easily understand how a certain website functions immediately after they have scanned the page.

Here are guidelines to improve your website’s usability:

Simple and clear web navigation design

• It must be situated in the exact same location on each page and in exact same format, so that your visitors will not get frustrated and confused if links disappear and appear unpredictably.

• Use suitable text in your links. Your visitors must know where links will take them, through reading the text provided in your link.

• Employ the use of CSS to give emphasis on text links.

• Include always text links. Keep in mind that each page must have “text links” which links to all important parts of the website.

• Include a “site logo” linking to your home page. Generally site logos are located at the topmost “left-hand” corner of the page, where most visitors have the tendency to go even before searching for the homepage link which usually is located in your navigation system.

• Place a website search box to help your visitors locate quickly the information that they need.

Have a simple, authentic and clear content.

An attractive web design no doubt attracts visitors yet good content is what keeps your visitors on your site and inspires them to visit again.

• When you write your content, while it is important to think of search engines and keywords, also think of your visitors and present the content in a manner that is easily understandable and to solve their problems.

• Create an attractive heading and each paragraph should offer appealing statements all the time.

• Create a page content that is easy to scan and emphasize your most important points with colors, bold letters or header tags.

Support your brand

A great brand strengthens your visitors’ impression or idea of your website. A site that is branded strongly imprints in your visitors mind your products each time they go “shopping”.

• Keep typefaces and colors consistent. Pick fonts and colors carefully and consistently use them throughout the website.

• Keep your page layout constant. Employ the use of a “website template” in order to carry out a consistent page structure.

• Make a helpful custom page error that can help visitors should they click on “a broken link” or enter an incorrect URL.

Provide visitor feedback

Forms are essential to your ecommerce site’s success, as without it, you can not have your shopping cart. And any site generally needs a form for visitor feedback.

• Keep them short and easily accessible, clearly noting what is required in order to submit it successfully.

• Supply your complete contact details including your fax number, business telephone number, postal address and your email address.

Test your website prior to launching

• Test to determine if your website loads successfully in all “browsers”.

• Test all your links and be sure that they are working properly.

• Look for and be sure that your website is free from errors.

• Search for grammatical errors and misspelled words and correct them if any.

• Test your website load times.

Web usability puts designing and planning primarily for your website visitors your top priority. Website that measure up to the expectations of its visitors will have comfortable visitors that will visit your site again and again and recommend it to friends.

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Website Designer Tips

Web usability according to research, was proven to be the most significant factor in web design. In fact, it is the influential element that keeps visitors returning to your site.

Usually the most overlooked aspect when designing a website, nonetheless in actuality, usability has power over the web. When your visitors can not easily navigate your site, chances are, he will not utilize your library in search for information and just go to other sites. Note that all sites are just a click of the mouse away. Hundreds of thousands of other online stores that offer the same services or products as you are crowding the internet, making online shoppers more selective and choosy when concluding whether to stay and continue their browsing or just leave.

The internet offers online shoppers ample freedom and various choices; nobody will ever waste their time on a poorly constructed website. In order to provide web usability, you must involve or think of your prospect clients in designing it.

Not like a traditional “brick and mortar” store, a lot of online stores or websites do not permit their visitors to “walk through” inside the site as they can in a traditional store set-up. While this may seem an unworkable task to accomplish, if done correctly, a “user-friendly” approach to web design will easily accomplish this task.

When online shopping, all things must to be located where visitors expect them to be at. The practice of flooding a client with abundant item choices all at the same time and making them search for certain items that they need, is most definitely not the concept of web usability.

Your visitors must be taken into consideration all throughout your planning as well as designing process. Bear in mind that web usability must never be considered after the construction of a website.

Fixing and then testing your website only after construction is useless and will not yield satisfactory results. Your best approach would be to combine a replica of "pervasive usability" unto your web design and construction process.

According to surveys, here are top 12 reasons why visitors want to go back to your site:

• Easy navigation 74%

• Quick download time 65%

• Frequently updated information 58%

• Content quality 57%

• Content quantity 30%

• Content organization 40%

• Prompt customer service 40%

• Website search tools 25%

• Layout of homepage 20%

• Enjoyment 19%

• Website appearance 18%

• Inclusion of animated graphics 9%

Basing from these reasons, here are usability tips to help you design your website:

1. Become familiar with your visitors based on their preferences. You need a website with personality as well as content quality that accommodates your visitor’s taste; you should understand and recognize their color choices, technical skills, etc.

2. Create obvious and simple interface. The more apparent and recognizable the web interface is, then your visitors never have to undergo frustration in guessing how your site really works, and instead on concentrating on the interface, they should be concentrating on your site’s content.

3. Website readability. Create “easy to read” paragraph, not using small text or font size.

4. Quick loading. You need a fast downloadable page as visitors hate to wait.

5. Avoid hidden navigation, as your visitors need to know where and what to click in order to go someplace.

6. Get visitor feedbacks so you will know what is working and what does not. Learn from your prospects.

7. Investigate on website visitor performance. Determine how long it takes to perform a certain task? It should not take too long, the faster the better. If not, work on your user interaction so to improve performance.

8. Provide a help section. If your website visitor does make a certain mistake, then they truly will appreciate it if you provide ways to assist them. “404 page” is great for directing “spiders” to crawl unto your webpage.
Testing for usability

Testing for usability is not complicated and very inexpensive to carry out. The easiest answer is to design a simple sequence of undertakings for web users to carry out trials.

Invite people or friends to your workplace, then request them to navigate your website, watching and observing while they surf. Do not wait when your website is done before you test it; test it now.

The work can be simple like finding out a product’s information or finding out how a certain firm can be contacted or one can order a product and finding shipping policies information.

After testing, fix any problem and test it again. Continue testing and refining web usability of your website until such time that there are no problems found, that the experience is efficient and pleasant.

Remember that website usability is concerned to not just the appearance of a site, but more importantly how your site performs and particularly, it gives emphasis on the experience of your visitors.

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