How To Make Your Website More Usable

Is your website really good-looking? Are you proud of it? Do yourself a favor and check the usability analytics. If your site has a low usability index, it’ll do your business more harm than good. It’s best if businesses consider all aspects of site usability before commissioning site design and development. If your site is already up and running, there are several fixes you can make to render it more usable. Here’s how.

Reduce User Effort

You want your website users to feel completely comfortable on your site. To achieve that:

• Place user-critical and business-critical stuff above the fold
• Get rid of horizontal scrolling
• Say goodbye to lengthy registration forms
• Make sure your Call To Action (CTA) links and buttons are bold, colorful and visible.
• Upload creative, original and useful images of your products
• Place images exactly where users will notice them. People read left to right – so images placed on the right-hand side of a page will get more attention.
• Use simple words to craft your Unique Sales Proposition (USP). Convey exactly what you offer and why your users should buy your product or solution
• Your copy should comprise of brief text, organized by headings and sub-headings if needed. Use bullet points to convey important info. This helps rapid-scan users to quickly glean the info they want.

Make It Easy To Locate Stuff

Your site’s navigation will pretty much dictate how much your site gets used. If users find it hard to locate the information they seek, they’ll just give up and visit your competitor’s site.

• Make it possible for users to search for items using text or product code. Allow them, to filter and sort search results as they desire.
• Display visited links in a different color
• Provide a detailed site map
• Also provide a footprint guide on each page so users know where they’ve been, and are able to revisit those pages
• Provide detailed product listing, organized within categories and sub-categories. Each category should display an associated image in the drop-down menu listing.

Make Your Website Mobile-friendly

Today’s users browse the net using multiple smart devices. You want to make sure that your website retains its integrity and usability on all kinds of viewing platforms.

• Use responsive layouts to ensure your site’s mobile-friendliness
• Increase the size of CTA buttons so mobile users can see them well
• Allow sufficient white space between your CTA buttons and any text or images. This will make it easier for users to press the buttons without touching other page elements
• Ensure text eligibility by allowing friendly space between characters, paragraphs and words. Dense text is hard to handle, even on big screens. On mobile screens, generous spacing even in page margins creates a very reader-friendly environment.

Keep Running Site Analytics

Each time you make changes to your site design, run your analytics program and evaluate usability statistics. Keep testing your live site after you’ve uploaded your changes. Watch out for pages that are least visited and find out what’s needed there. Keep running tests on a daily basis, making the site usability your main priority.

This Guest Post was written by Sonal Maheshwari, she loves pursuing excellence through writing and has a passion for technology. She has successfully managed and run personal technology magazines and websites. She currently writes for intellipaat.com, a global training company that provides e-learning and professional certification training.  She is based out of Pune and has 6 years experience in the field of content writing and blogging. Her work has been published on various sites related to Project Management, Microstrategy Training, Digital Marketing and more.