Have you ever visited a website only to find yourself leaving with more questions? Or perhaps you waited an entire minute for a web page to load and left before you had a chance to read anything.
This is a case of a website with poor usability.
Your website is the virtual doorway to your business. It is often the first impression potential customers get of your business. Many aspects of your business depend on your website, such as e-commerce, distribution of information, brand awareness, and much more! Therefore, if your website is not easy to use, you will lose potential customers. This will also greatly affect the SEO of your website as Google penalises websites that aren’t user-friendly.
To avoid such tragedies from occurring, we will be sharing six tips you need to know to have a user-friendly website.
TIP 1: USE THE RIGHT COLOUR!
You heard us right! Colour. Is. Important.
Your brand should have brand colours identified in its brand guidelines. Your website provides a great opportunity to use these colours and other branding elements to establish the brand’s personality. Incorporating your brand’s colours into the design of the website will allow users to know that they have clicked on the correct website as they will recognise your brand identity.
If you use other colours along with your brand’s colours, consider the mood and tone they evoke. Colours are often associated with elements and characteristics. An example can be how light blue is often associated with medicine, dental, or cleaning services and green with money, the environment, or education.
Understanding how to choose the right colours can go a long way in allowing web visitors to discern what your business or organisation is about!
TIP 2: CONSIDER CONTRAST
Why does contrast matter? Because poor vision and colour vision deficiency (or “colour blindness”) is extremely widespread, colour contrast is a crucial factor to consider when creating websites. When colour pairings lack contrast, the text might be difficult or impossible to read for people with poor vision or colour vision deficit.
Even for those without disabilities, contrast can provide important practical and visual effects and can be very useful for a range of purposes, including drawing attention to key elements, creating visual interest, and improving legibility. Use the image below, for example, it’s easy to see how the purple writing on the left could get lost in the blue background.
Visual example of why contrast matters
There are plenty of free tools online that can help you ensure your design has enough contrast to ensure ease of usability for everyone.
TIP 3: KEEP YOUR FORMS SIMPLE!
Forms are one of the most effective ways of generating leads for your business. However, many businesses lose potential leads due to complicated and frustrating forms. This may be from having too many fields, asking unrelated questions, or not making it clear how long the form will be.
To avoid these mistakes, here are 3 simple things to keep in mind:
- Offer tips and suggestions.
- Only ask the necessary questions. (Do you really need to know their age?)
- Clarify the time it will take to complete.
- Show completion message when it is filled in.
- Remember: Keep your forms simple, clean, and straight to the point!
TIP 4: LOOK OUT FOR MOBILE!
These days, over half of online searches are done on mobile. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you will lose many potential customers, and given that mobile-friendliness is a huge Google ranking factor, you risk the ranking of your website too. The easiest way is to check on your mobile phone to see if your website is running slow or if certain elements are incorrect in sizing. Ask these three questions:
- Is the information easy to find?
- Are the texts readable on the small screen?
- Is the speed of your website satisfactory?
If you have answered no to any of the questions stated above, you need to start thinking about how you can improve the usability of your website on mobile phones.
TIP 5: MAKE IT FAST!
You’re busy, they’re busy, everybody is busy! The last thing a web visitor wants is to wait for the website to load.
Did you know that 40% of visitors leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load? That’s a shocking number of customers lost because of a slow website!
Third-party plug-ins and widgets are one of the most common factors that affect your website’s speed. Try to minimise their use and optimise any large files such as videos or images. Remember to keep your website simple, clean, and fast to achieve maximum engagement for your visitors.
TIP 6: LOGICAL NAVIGATION
Every user-friendly website must have an easy-to-navigate layout. Whatever layout you choose, make sure visitors can simply and quickly locate what they’re searching for.
This includes having an intuitive and easy-to-navigate structure, simple wording, and a limited number of subheadings in the navigation bar.
CONCLUSION
Website usability is not only important for your website’s performance and SEO, but also for your brand. It can show customers your professionalism, quality, and character, which will ultimately boost your chances of success in the competitive digital world.
Be sure to make use of these tips and create a website that is friendly to all users!
