8 Tips On How To Improve Your Website’s Usability
Usability plays an important factor for your website’s success. It is something that you simply can’t take for granted anymore. With better usability, your visitors will have a better experience, and they’ll want to come back.
In this day and age, your website will never succeed if it’s not user-friendly. Web users don’t put up with bad usability anymore. If they’re not satisfied with your website, they’ll just go back to the web result page and find another page.
To make sure that this does not happen to you, here are 8 tips on how you can improve your website’s usability:
Make your website mobile-friendly
It’s surprising to see that some websites are still not mobile-friendly, considering the fact that most internet traffic comes from mobile users. These mobile users not only browse but also purchase from online websites. It is projected that around 73% of mobile users will account for eCommerce websites with two years.
So if you want your website to succeed, you must optimize it for mobile users.
Even after you’ve made your website mobile-friendly, there are still some things you can do to improve the usability.
For example, when you’re browsing a page from your computer, you can easily click anywhere on the screen. However, when it comes to mobile phones, some areas are easier to reach than others. So it is ideal to place those clickable items on the areas where mobile users can easily reach.
There several also several other ways through which you can optimize your website to make it more mobile-friendly.
WCAG Standards
The WCAG, which stands for web content accessibility guidelines, was laid out so that web designers can design pages that were more suitable for people with disabilities.
A large percentage of people around the world have some kind of disability. It is ideal to follow those WCAG standards so that you don’t discourage that part of the population. Some of the most common disabilities are speech, physical, cognitive, neurological, and auditory.
So you might be wondering how to make your website more suitable for people with these disabilities. It’s simple if you know.
Colour-blindness is one of the most common issues that most web users have. People with this problem can have a hard time differentiating certain colours. So you can make your website more suitable for them by avoiding conflicting colours.
You can also avoid flashing lights on your website to make it suitable for people with light sensitivity.
Adopt the Most Common Web Designs
When you’re building a new website, it is important to stick with the most common web designs. This is because when your visitors come and see something that is familiar to them, they will likely have a better experience.
Based on a study, the most common web designs that you should follow are:
- Placing your logo at the top-left area of the screen
- Contact information at the top right
- The horizontal menu bar at the top
- Search right beside the menu bar and,
- Links to your social media page in the footer
It is best to follow these practices if you want your web visitors to feel comfortable on your site.
Make a visual hierarchy
If you want to improve your site’s usability, it is important to focus on the visuals as well. You need to make the content clear so that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for.
For example, if you visit a website with more than 20 images all laid out in the same format, you will find it too overwhelming. You probably won’t know what to look for. This is something you should always avoid if you want to have a website with good user experience.
What you should do is make a visual hierarchy of the content on your website. Place the most important piece of your website on the first spot with a larger icon. And then place the second most important piece on the next spot and use a smaller icon. This will indicate the most important part of your content.
Some of the factors that you should keep in mind are
- Size
- Contrast
- Color
- Alignment
- Position
Simple Navigation
Having simple navigation is probably one of your website’s most important features that make it more user-friendly. It is even more important if you run an eCommerce website.
Your homepage and visuals are an important part of your website, but users will have to navigate to other parts of your page at the end of the day.
It is important to consider how many clicks your user needs to get from one part to another. If you think it’s too many, you might want to change it.
Improve your credibility
Most websites don’t know this, but your credibility plays an important role in your site’s usability. Why? Because people have a good experience on your site when they know it’s trustworthy. If your website is not trustworthy, they will not feel safe.
So how can you make your website credible? It’s easy. Just be transparent about what’s on your website and provide your contact information.
Easy-to-understand Content
One of the biggest mistakes that web designers in Wigan make is by using extremely stylish fonts on their websites. Sure they look cool, but the idea is to make people read what’s on your website. If the fonts are not legible, users will likely leave your website.
Besides the font, you should also choose the right colours along with short sentences and paragraphs. Your content should also be scannable because most readers don’t read each and every word on your website.
Be Consistent
Last but not least, your website should be consistent with every page if you want it to be user-friendly. You do not want every page to be different from one another. To avoid that, you should try to use the same themes and layout on each page. Otherwise, your page will become too confusing for the visitors.
Conclusion
Your website usability should be your top priority when you’re designing it. If it does not have a good user experience value, visitors will likely leave and never come back again. With the points mentioned above, we hope that you have a better idea on how to improve your site’s usability.