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Web Design

Part 3 of 4: In truth, if you have been reading this article series in order, you have already learned some ways to make your website user-friendly. This article will hit the highlights of website usability. “Website Usability” refers to how easy your site is for people to learn and use.

Key Point: Make your site as easy as possible to use – no one will complain that your site is “too easy” to use, even if they are an expert user.

1. How to create a free website
2. Adding content to your website
3. Making your website user-friendly
4. What is a search engine?

Keep in mind when you make your own website that your site needs to be easy to use. If your site is not easy enough to use, people will go somewhere else – it’s that simple. There are over 80 billion websites in the world, and more all the time, so your site must be very usable.

10 Ways to Make Your Website User-friendly

1. Have visible, consistent navigation. When someone comes to your site, they want to know what they can do there. Make sure that your company/organization name is clear on each page, usually in the top left, and that you have a menu of topics on every page. The menu should be short (5 – 8 items are easy to remember), and it should always be in the same place on every page.
2. Put important information near the top. When people come to your site, they will scan the page to see if it is valuable to them. Users will read 10 – 20 words on any given page, and less than 25% of users will scroll down to read them. So, you must grab their attention by putting the 10 – 20 most important words near the top of your pages.
3. Avoid animation. The human eye is drawn to motion, so if you have animation on your pages, it usually distracts people from what you really want them to see. Furthermore, many ads use animation to lure people’s eye, so most people ignore animated graphics, thinking they are just ads.
4. Keep your text short and simple. People do not read on the web, they scan. They’re busy, and it’s hard to read long paragraphs on screen, so write in simple, clear language. Avoid marketing or corporate-sounding language. More writing tips for the web
5. Name your hyperlinks clearly. A good hyperlink should tell people what they will get if they click on it. This saves people time, because they will only have to click on things which are interesting and valuable to them. Never use “Click Here” because it doesn’t tell people anything. More tips on naming links
6. Keep it in one window. Avoid anything that opens a popup window (users hate these) or opens a page in another window. It’s tempting to open other websites in a new window, for example, so that your site will stay open. However, this confuses most people, and it breaks the “back” button. Most website users use the back button as a fail safe method to get back to the last page they recognized.
7. Use prevailing standards. It is very tempting to use trendy terms or graphics, in an effort to make your website stand out among your competitors. However, this just confuses your audience. Instead, use terms that are already commonly used, so that people know what they mean right away. For example, use Contact Us for your contact information or About Us for a history of your company or organization.
8. Avoid large images. Large images make your pages slow to load. Many people have broadband internet connections now, but there are still a lot of people who do not. In addition, people are now surfing the internet from mobile phones, and those connections can be slow. So, minimize your use of images, and when you do use them, make sure they are optimized for web pages (i.e. 72 pixels per inch resolution, a maximum of 1000 pixels in height/width, etc.)
9. Test your website. This seems like common sense, but many people neglect this crucial step. Proofread your pages for spelling and grammar mistakes, click on all the links to make sure that they work, and view every page from several different computers and browsers. Pages that are broken confuse and irritate your users, and really detract from your credibility.
10. Keep your pages up to date. Out of date information on your site also detracts from your credibility, so make sure to keep the pages up to date. Be honest with yourself – if you know you can’t keep the information up to date, don’t put it on the site in the first place. For example, if you can’t update your “daily specials” page every day, then consider saying, “Call 206-555-1212 for our daily specials” instead.

These are the key areas of usability. If you are interested in reading more on this topic, two popular usability books are Prioritizing Web Usability, the source from which many of these tips are taken, and Don’t Make Me Think. You can also visit Jakob Nielsen’s website, as he is a recognized usability expert.

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Tags: usability, writing

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.