Web Site Design Resource Center
Top 5: Make Your Web Site More User-Friendly
Small businesses have a particularly difficult time in determining exactly how their web site should be built. Central to this issue is how to make sure the site is user-friendly. Most small businesses concentrate their web design efforts on just getting something up there. We touched on this in parts of our list of reasons why your web site will fail.
Just "getting something up there" is the wrong approach. You have to think like the visitors who will be using your site and design for their needs.
So, how can you make your web site stronger by keeping user-friendliness, or usability, in mind?
5. Eliminate "doorway" and "splash" pages
We've seen these pages before. They're the obnoxious, graphic-intense or Flash-designed introduction pages that try to force you to watch or read something before entering into the web site. Or, sometimes they aren't creative and just show a line of text along with "Enter Here."
These types of "doorway" pages must go. They offer little or no value, and only serve to add a roadblock in front of users trying to get to the meat of your web site.
Users want content. They want to learn about your business. Most of all, they want to do this quickly and efficiently.
4. Always keep aesthetics in mind
This is a good rule of thumb for almost anything creative you're working on. When we say aesthetics, we mean the basics of the web design: colors, fonts, borders, graphics, and how they're all put together.
If your web site is trying to mesh two colors that simply don't go together, don't do it. The worst offense is using an unreadable color for fonts, such as bright yellow on a white background.
Pick a good font and be consistent with it. Good fonts for the web usually reside in the sans-serif category which includes fonts such as Arial, Verdana, and Trebuchet. However, serif-based fonts such as Georgia and Garamond are equally as good for header fonts. When you pick a font, keep with it. Don't use Arial on some pages and then Comic Sans on the other pages.
Finally, if you incorporate graphics into your web site, pick ones that are relevant and meaningful. If the graphic distracts in the wrong way, users may lose focus on your content.
3. Create lists
Many people are not fond of reading large chunks of text on their computer. It strains the eye and requires people to focus in an environment that is usually full of distractions such as email and pop-up notifications.
How can you get around this? Dice up your large content blocks with bulleted lists. More than likely, your users are just going to want to skim your web site over to learn about your business and the products or services you offer. And unless the content you're providing is resource-based (such as this article), you have only a short attention span to work with.
Lists are good because they allow for generous amounts of whitespace and they can be easily skimmed on a point-by-point basis.
2. Design your navigation and pages with good labels
When landing on your web site, users want to be able to quickly find what they're after. Whether it's information about your products or filling out a service request form, your web site needs to clearly label these important areas.
Labels are especially important for navigation. You need to think like your users and determine what terminology they would use in describing your business. For example, if you operate a bank, are your users going to want to open a "deposit account" or a "checking account."
Any confusion about where to click can add seconds to a user's decision-making, which on the Internet is close to a lifetime.
1. Build in strong calls to action
Your web site must have a purpose of some kind. Do you want users to read something? Do you want them to fill out a form? Whatever action it is that you want your users to take, you must tell them!
Designing good calls to action will accomplish this task. A call to action can be as simple as a link on your homepage telling users to fill out a support ticket or it can be as complex as a pop-up box appearing within your web site asking a user if they need help (careful with this as these are easily annoying to users).
You don't need to skirt around your motivations for getting users on your web site. They're there because you have what they may be looking for. Give them the direction they need!