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Ten Ways to Make Your Website Work Harder for You
Internet users now visit enough websites to understand what works for them and what doesn’t. Your website competes with everything from sophisticated, highly engineered sites to the homemade variety pieced together from a template.
How well does your website work for your business?
The pros know that the effectiveness of websites depends largely on usability factors.
Use these Top Ten Usability Factors to assess where your website needs improvement.
Top Ten Usability Factors
- Home Page
- Relevance
- Content
- Visitor Expectations
- Performance
- Graphics & Multimedia
- Page Layout
- Links
- Credibility
- Site Organization
1: Home Page
First impressions count.
Your home page needs to appeal immediately to the visitor and to communicate clearly the purpose of the site.
Effective home pages have these common elements
- Look like home pages
- Visually appealing
- Show all major options
- Are completely visible on the screen without scrolling
- Prose text is limited
- Indicate “new” features on the site
Additional Tip: Visitors should always be able to reach the home page from any other page on your website.
2: Relevance
Your website should focus on the user’s goals.
Know the three main reasons visitors will come to your site. Once there, visitors should find information that is
- Timely
- Accurate
- Easy to Find
3: Content
Content is the most important element of your website. Material should be written specifically for a web audience. That includes
- Limiting sentences to 20 words
- Limiting paragraphs to 6 sentences
- Opening sentences that capture primary theme
- Text that makes action sequences clear
- Text with familiar words, jargon-free and avoids acronyms & abbreviations
- Fonts with mixed cases, proper size and colour
- Affirmative, active voice and verb tense
- Liberal use of bulleted items and keywords
4: Visitor Expectations
Focus on user satisfaction. Visitors come to your site with certain expectations, including
- Familiar fonts that are easy to read and properly sized (minimum 12 point)
- Appropriate capitalization. Mixed case words are easier to read.
- Black text on plain high contrast background (can be read up to 32% faster than light text on dark background)
- Compliance with web conventions (blue text for hyperlinks, privacy policy, contact links)
- Proper spelling
- Visual consistency
- Security for e-business sites
5: Performance
Visitors expect to view all elements of your site and that it will be operational at all times. Focus on performance rather than aesthetics, or more on function than flash.
Considerations should include:
- User hardware, software interface issues
- Load times for graphics, multi-media
- Links that dead-end navigation
- Consistent labeling of clickable items
- Rapid vertical scrolling and no horizontal scrolling
6: Graphics & Multimedia
Used properly graphics and multimedia can add value to your website. Used improperly, graphics and multimedia can leave the user frustrated and annoyed.
Considerations should include:
- Loading speed
- Placement of banners and advertising
- Images should appear “above the fold”
- Animation, video, audio should always support website message
- Images must have proper web resolution
Background images should be simple and used sparingly.
7: Page Layout
Web pages should be laid out to ease user comprehension of the contents. Visitors view pages in the following order: 1) top center 2) scans left 3) scans right 4) scans down the page
Increase user satisfaction by:
- Arranging items by order of importance
- Avoid clutter
- Pay attention to alignment
- Structure items for easy comparisons (similarities,trends,costs)
- Moderate use of white space
- Position clickable items in consistent locations (usually top, center)
- Primary navigation on left side of page or in left panel where users expect it
- Differentiate navigational elements by group in an obvious location on each page
- Layout should allow users to find information efficiently.
- Printable pages should fit paper prototypes
Pay attention to text appearance.
8: Links
The Internet is a hypertext medium and meaningful links add to the user experience. Local navigation and related links to external sites deserve careful consideration and preferably open in a “new window” to facilitate an easy return.
For effective links consider:
- Text links work better than graphic links
- Link only to related content
- Match names to destination pages so user knows when they’ve reached intended page
- Provide consistent clickability clues. Blue underlining signals a hyperlink to the user
- Use a colour change to designate used links
- Ensure important content can be accessed from more than one link
- Always provide link back to Home Page from every page
- Never leave user stranded by a link
Test all links and monitor to ensure external links remain relevant.
9: Credibility
A well maintained website reassures users that they are dealing with professionals.
Make sure the content on your website is:
- Appropriate for the visitors you expect
- Contains accurate and up to date material
- Spelling, vocabulary and grammar are error free
If industry appropriate, indicate certifications, affiliations or regulatory compliance.
10: Site Organization
Navigation and site structure should reflect user needs and goals not those of your company or organization.
- Search capabilities greatly enhance the user experience
- Navigation should allow users to find information quickly and efficiently
- Content needs to be well organized to aid navigation
- Users favour minimalist navigation systems that allow free movement through your web architecture
- Headings, Titles and Labels facilitate scanning and reading material
- Descriptive page titles should also appear in browser bar on screen to aid user and facilitate book-marking or saving to favourites
- Facilitate rapid scrolling by highlighting major items
- Avoid scrolling where possible by adding shorter pagers with specific content
Changes in technology and user expectations mean companies generally need to upgrade their websites every 18-24 months while content should be updated regularly and in some cases daily.
The Newland Group is an award winning internet consulting firm specializing in strategic internet solutions for business and not-for-profit organizations.
You can email us at info@newland.com |
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