Web usability is an approach used at the design stage of building a website in order to help make websites easy to use, navigate and understand. Find out how you can use website usability to improve the usability of your website so you get the most conversions and results from it.

1. USABILITY IN WEB
DESIGN
Improve the usability of your website to increase
conversions.

2. Usability


Web usability is an approach used at the
design stage of building a website in order to
help make websites easy to use, navigate
and understand.
Codes and conventions of websites are used
to help create good usability on a website.
Conventions of a website are such elements
as a navigation menu, a header and a footer.
These sections are ideal to always include in
any bespoke web design as they hold key
pieces of information required by customers
and users of a website. Having these
sections in roughly the same place on a
website, makes it easier for someone who
has never been on the website to find the
information they require quickly.

3. Search

Make search on your website easy for the user. There are so
many websites that do not incorporate good usability experience
in search functions on their website. It can be difficult for users to
find what they want.

Users should not have to adapt to fit the search criteria on your
website. No one should have to think about how they should
search to get the results that they want and are looking for.

Bad examples are drop down menus that do not make any sense
to the user. i.e using ‘Name’ rather than ‘Author’ in a book search
function.

TIP: Make it clear and easy to search on your website.

4. Content

Make obvious what is most important on a page.

The design of your website should be easy to read and designed in
a way that is easy for the user to understand.

Choose headings that make it clear what a particular section is
about. Do not frustrate your users by making them scan read your
page before finding what they are after.

Use h1s, h2s & h3s to tag and prioritise your section headings. This
will also be of benefit for SEO (search engine optimisation) as
search engine robots will be able to scan down the page and find
what exactly the page is about and rank it well to how important and
relevant it is to a search query.

5. The Reality of People’s Search

Web designers have their own ideas for how they want
their users to look at and use a page they have
designed. The fact is, every person that visits your
website will look at and use pages differently. There isn’t
one person that will read a full page before moving off to
the next unless the page is relevant to their query.

Users tend to scan read a page until they find
something that vaguely matches a query they are after.
If they don’t find anything that is even close to what they
want, they will bounce off the website. This is why it is
important to make clear what each section is about
within the first couple sentences and use a good header
to draw users into reading your content.

6. Call To ACTION!

There are ways in which you can design and develop your
website so you grab the attention of your potential customers
quickly and with ease. Your ultimate aim is to make people read
the content on your site, engage on the website and convert by
either buying a product or through filling out a contact form. If it is
not clear what you want users to do on each page, you are
unlikely to get the results you’re after.

TIP: Add calls to action on each of your pages to get people to
“Buy Now” “Contact Us Today” or “Add to your shopping cart
today!”

7. Visual hierarchies

The more important something is
the bigger the heading should
be. When a page does not
contain a clear visual hierarchy, it
is much harder for a user to scan
down the page and find what
they are after. Instead they
themselves have to scan read
and go down the page and
determine what is important to
them.

TIP: Add clear headings to each
of your sections.

8. Conventions

Conventions on a website are useful tools to use when designing a
website.

Conventions are in place as they make sense and they work. Most
users know exactly where to find certain elements and sections on a
website. For example, everyone knows where to find contact
information on a website, either by the contact page found in the
navigation, in the footer or telephone number in the header of a
webpage.

TIP: Use the traditional layout of a webpage to help users navigate
around your website.

9. Make your design clear



Keep the navigation on your website consistent so you do not lose
any potential customers on their journey to your shopping cart or
contact form.
Make links clear! You wouldn’t believe how many websites have
links that are not clear to be seen as a link. Internal linking is used
to make it easier for users to navigate through your website to the
lower levels. If your links cannot be found or you do not design your
website to fit this convention, you will only get users going to the top
level pages and not fully finding all of the content on your website.
TIP: Make your links a different colour, underline them, make the
buttons stand out and give them hover and click states to make it
clear that it is a link.

10. Keep your website simple

Keep the content down to useful information. Over crowded pages
with lots of content in blocks do not get read. Try not to over crowd
the pages with lots of content that is not necessary.

Do not add too many banner advertisements to your website. These
tend to frustrate users and distract them away from your website.
Even Google now prefers users to have no more than one or two
banner advertisements on a page. If you do have advertisements,
make them relevant and useful to your users.

TIP: Keep your content to key important information only.

11. Drive Conversions

For E-Commerce websites, it is important to make the
user journey of the shopping experience on your
website easy and secure, right from putting products in
a basket, through to the check out and payment.

Consider widely used payment methods for your
customers to buy your products easily such as PayPal,
debit and credit cards.

Use breadcrumbs on your website so your users can
navigate back to a products section easily after viewing
a product they have not put in their shopping cart.

TIP: Allow as many payment methods to your payment
process as you can.

TIP: Do not make people sign up to your newsletter
and create an account if it is not necessary.

12. Marketing Your Website

Marketing your online business is really important even before
anyone lands on your website. For this you will need to know your
audiences and ensure that everything on your website targets that
particular audience. This will help you to receive the right types of
customers that will convert or buy on your website.

Marketing agencies can help to plan out a strategy that is ideal for
you and your company through marketing workshops. This will help
you to understand where you should use your marketing spend and
what services you need specific to your business.

13. Conclusion

Think about how users will navigate through your
website.

Use the conventions of a website to ensure users can
easily navigate your website.

Keep your design simple and clear.

Make your links clear that they link to other pages on
your websites.

Keep your content to key important information only.

Get your users to your conversion finishing line and
design your website with usability in mind.

Do not make people sign up to your newsletter and
create an account if it’s not necessary.

Know and market your business to the right types of
audience.