Top 8 Helpful Web Usability Tips For Web Designers
Making it simple for users of your website to locate the information they require when they require it is the essence of web usability.
The idea that usability is expensive is one that web companies frequently hold. Yes, some big companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on usability research and testing, but a small business can achieve web usability without the help of usability experts or expensive testing tools.
Even simpler is the task at hand for web designers, who can learn the fundamentals of usability and how to apply them on a website by reading 8 usability tips from the article below.
What is web usability?
As a component of web design, web usability refers to the effectiveness and happiness attained by enabling users to engage with your website. You are more likely to locate what you're looking for on a website if it is simple to navigate. Because of this, it is relevant to the happiness of the user experience.
Layout, visual design, branding, sound, and interaction are some of the elements that go into creating an interface, and these are all covered by the discipline of user experience design.
Advantages of web usability
You can get the following advantages by doing web usability research on your website or app:
- Enhanced productivity: users can complete more tasks at once on a website that has better usability. Since it will be easier to understand how it works, your employees will be able to produce more.
- Cost savings for training and support: the easier a program is to use, the less training is required, and the less money is spent on it.
- Higher sales and revenue: users can execute tasks more easily with an interface created to improve web usability, including making purchases in the case of e-commerce.
- Reduction of expenses and development time: the capabilities are homogenous because the usable tools are more straightforward and consistent. As a result, development costs are decreased.
- Lowering maintenance cost: fewer occurrences are produced when an application is usable. This requires more periodic adjustments and changes, resulting in lower maintenance expenses.
- An improvement in consumer satisfaction: when a website or mobile application (app) has an intuitive design and is simple to use, the user experience is significantly improved. Customers become more at ease and devoted to them as a result.
Top 8 web usability tips for web designers
Image and text balance
Images may improve your website greatly and make it simple to share stuff with your users that they might find interesting. However, there are several reasons why your website copy is likely your most valuable asset.
You can communicate with your readers and search engines using copy, and you can draw in new customers by advertising on google and other websites. As a writer, your material is very crucial because it represents you and your writing.
Build your theme around how frequently you update it
First and foremost, you need to decide how frequently you'll update your website in advance. Choose a different website theme that is a little more static than a blog but still nice and professional if you won't be blogging or updating frequently.
Visitors won't anticipate frequent updates if your website isn't built around a blog, but you can still offer helpful content to everybody who visits. You can also add a blog component to your website using several themes.
Design for consistency and readability
Even if you spend hours examining typefaces and color schemes, your website cannot render as you would like or anticipate. Even when a website's programming is the same, its appearance can occasionally appear completely different in Chrome than in a browser like Firefox.
Standardizing color can be more challenging because different computer monitors may display color quite differently. Try to ensure that your theme includes common typefaces and has a lot of contrast to avoid poor readability and promote consistency in your design.
Consider avoiding splash pages
Do your readers have to visit another page in order to access your website? Regardless of how your website is set up, having a splash page can be problematic from a usability standpoint since it slows down your readers' ability to access the information they want to see. If your answer is “yes,” then you have what is known as a “splash page.”
Possess a domain
Did you realize that you might not own your own material if you host your website on a free domain like WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, or Blogspot? Every free service, including platforms for websites and blogs, includes a terms of service (ToS) document that outlines your rights.
I strongly advise reading the terms of service for each website you have signed up for and thinking about getting your own domain. Additionally, using your own domain tends to make you appear more professional than using a free service.
Finding what you're looking for on an author's website requires too much hunting and pecking, which is the worst. How often have you had to go through pages of cat photographs or other private material simply to learn more about a book or an author's bibliography?
People should be able to navigate your website easily, and it should be focused on your main objective. If your website is about you as a writer, make sure it is navigable for all your target markets, including readers, reviewers, agents, editors, and the press. Make it obvious on a faq page that your website is about you as a person and point people there instead of to your online resume.
Offer a search function
Recall how I mentioned that visitors could find stuff on your website? If anything is on your website, a visitor shouldn't need to click back to a search engine to find it. Some websites include built-in search capabilities, whereas others don't. Double-check your website to make sure it has that capability in either case.
Keep user intent in mind
You must have a customer-centric mindset if you want to retain clients. Find out how they came across your links, what caught their eye, and what led them to your website.
A single page can be advertised in various ways, so it's critical to identify the most effective channels for you and concentrate on them. Investing more in creating branded social media profiles makes sense if you advertise your landing page using email, PPC advertisements, and social media and discover that the latter garners the greatest attention.
Once you've identified the most efficient promotional channels, investigate further to see just what makes them so successful. Users may pause scrolling long enough to click on ads that present attractive offers, compelling CTAs, requests for further information on a website, or other elements.
The promise of value is an essential component of your advertising campaign that encourages users to take action. Make sure the content of your website pages and the deals you are making align. Do not deceive potential customers. They will feel misled and acquire a quick negative judgment of your brand if they visit your site and cannot obtain the information promised in your advertisement.
What web design advice do you like best?
The success of your website is greatly influenced by web design, a complex subject. Therefore, it is vital to be knowledgeable about what you are doing. Using research as a source of guidance is an excellent method to guarantee that.
The aforementioned methods can be utilized to increase the effectiveness of your websites, enhance visitor experience, and boost conversion rates and other website success metrics. Once more, let's summarize them:
- Image and text balance
- Build your theme around how frequently you update it
- Design for consistency and readability
- Consider avoiding splash pages
- Possess a domain
- Offer simple, clear navigation
- Offer a search function
- Keep user intent in mind
We hope the information above will help you create a better website. Please feel free to provide any further advice, research, or knowledge you may have.
A great team of experts is needed to develop an entire web usability system. For you, we can complete all of this job at Groove Technology.
Tell us your marketing objectives, and we will translate them into services for your clients.