The way in which your website is experienced by its users is all that really matters. You can spend a long time designing your website, how it looks and how it functions, but if your visitors don’t find it comfortably navigable and easy to use, you have a problem. And that problem will end up losing your visitors and your traffic figures will go into freefall before long.
It’s all well and good talking about navigability and usability, but what are the key things that make those things possible for your website or any website? This is what we’re going to delve into and explore right now; you can then put what you learn into action when it comes to modifying and improving your website. Read on now to start learning more.
Clear Separations
It might sound like an obvious thing but it’s also something that people get wrong all too often when they’re designing websites. There isn’t that clear separation between the different aspects of the different aspects and details of the website, and this leads to messy and confusing clashes for the user.
You should make sure that things don’t end up blending together because it will leave people not sure where to click. At the very least, it will mean they take longer to search for the thing they’re looking for and that’s never a good thing for you. It should be immediately clear where one thing ends and another begins.
A Simplicity That Accommodates Autopilot Browsing
Simplicity is key if you want your website to be as user-friendly as it possibly can be. There’s no excuse for allowing your website to be difficult to use, and one way to measure all this is by whether or not it could be successfully navigated if the visitor was using it on autopilot. Would they still get to where they want to go?
People shouldn’t need to be 100% focused and alert to be able to use your website. They should be able to get to where they want to go swiftly and easily; the path there should be obvious. If it’s not those things, it’s already too complicated and is in urgent need of simplification.
Types of Navigation That Are Common and Familiar
Rather than coming up with your own ways to make your website navigable and easy to use, you should stick to the methods and conventions that are already commonly used. The reason for that is familiarity; people want to be familiar with the structure of your website and how to get around it.
If they are not familiar with how your website is structured, it will simply take them longer to find their way around it, which is clearly a problem for them and you. They might be on frustrated and just retreat to a rival website with a more easy to understand design and layout.
Simple Language, Free of Unnecessary Jargon
The words you populate your website with also matter a lot. The user experience will not be as strong as it could be if there are too many complicated words and messy jargon clogging up the site for users. It’s always best to keep things as simple as they can be.
If you’re not sure whether or not you’ve managed to achieve this, you should ask someone you know to read through the sight. Just make sure it’s someone who doesn’t have an intimate knowledge of your industry. That way they’ll be able to look at it through the eyes of a first-time visitor discovering your website.
Limited Number of Items on Each Page
There should be a limited number of things on each of the pages of your website to avoid clutter and mess. No one wants to be bombarded by a wide range of text and images as soon as they visit your website, or even after they’ve been browsing it for a while either.
Do what you can to cut things down to size and only offer up the information that is most essential to the visitor. If it doesn’t really need to there, you should simply take it away.
A Shallow Page Structure
The golden rule to follow in terms of the depth of your page structure is that no page should be more than three clicks assay from any other. It’s not always easy to implement that rule but you should definitely try.
When you have a structure as shallow and streamline as that, it makes using your website and navigating it smoothly so much easier than it would otherwise be for your users. Look at your current structure and see how close you are to that golden rule.
Responsive Page Designs
These days, people don’t simply browse on their laptops and desktops. Increasingly, people use smartphones and tablets as their primary way of browsing the internet and finding new websites. That’s something you need to be properly prepared for.
You don’t want someone to find your website and have it not respond and adapt to the screen they’re trying to view it on. Using a responsive design will allow your avoid any such problems.
Instant Loading
As soon as the user clicks something on your website, they should get an instant response. If the clunky design takes ages to load up and give the user what the asked for, it’s going to completely ruin the customer experience for them, and that would be truly disastrous. It’s what you should be working hard to avoid.
Do whatever possible to improve the overall speed of your website. This could mean changing the structure of it or simply improving and upgrading the hosting service you use. It doesn’t matter how you get there; what matters is the end experience for the user.
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