Usability issues to bear in mind when designing your website
Before you start to create your website or have one created for you, you need to step back and think about your site’s usability from the customer’s perspective. If your site is slow to load or difficult to navigate, you could lose potential customers within seconds of them arriving at your site. This article discusses some of the key website usability issues you need to be aware of to make your site as user-friendly as possible, to encourage people to linger and return again and again.
On this page:
Navigation
People need to be able to quickly determine what information your site covers, and then access that information. One of the best ways to achieve this is to have a menu of brief headings people can click on to be taken to specific web pages on your site. This type of menu often runs along either the top of a web page or down the left-hand side the page.
Because many visitors to your website won’t arrive on your home page, it’s important to have a standard menu on every web page, and for it to be in the same place, and have the same appearance, on each web page. Consistency here avoids confusion.
When creating a menu, consider the size of your product or service range. If you offer many different items or services, it would make sense for the menu options to take people to appropriate sub-menus. For example, if you sell women’s clothing, footwear and jewellery online, the footwear menu option could, when clicked on, reveal a sub-menu listing flats, heels, boots and sandals.
Also consider what items people are likely to search for first. If you sell clothing, tents and sleeping bags for outdoor enthusiasts and your tents are your bestsellers, consider placing these first on your menu.
Load times
Having too many photos, or having animations or videos on your web pages, will make them slow to load – that is, appear on a user’s computer screen in their complete form. Flash pages or Flash elements on a web page will also be slow to load. Most people won’t be willing to wait more than a few seconds for a page to load, so avoid using lots of photos, animations, videos or Flash unless they really add something useful to your site.
Readability
While it’s important to have text on your homepage and any other web pages you want search engines to be able to index and rank, there are a few golden rules for online writing:
- Break up text with subheadings and bullet points to aid skim reading (most online readers will skim rather than read word-for-word).
- Keep sentences and paragraphs short.
- Avoid small-sized fonts that force a reader to zoom in on your web pages.
- Bear in mind that it can be difficult to read text on a coloured background (e.g., navy blue text on a pale blue background).
Other tips
- Include a prominent ‘Contact Us’ menu link to your business’s full contact details.
- Ensure that any links open in new windows, rather than taking the user away from your site.
- Choose a reputable web host – you want your site to be online when people look for it.
- Keep your homepage uncluttered – it should be instantly obvious to people what your site offers and what their next step should be.
