Website usability is essential to a company’s ability to generate sales. It also contributes to the credibility of a website. The key to website usability is its layout, its navigation, ease of use, ease of updating and whether it is search engine friendly. All these contribute to the success of your website and to maintain the customer base.
A website usability approach in the current day involves designing a website using a good user experience strategy. This is usually defined as a process which takes into account the different needs of users across a wide age range and of different genders. Generally, a good user experience includes the following elements. Designing a website for ease of use, which includes designing a visual hierarchy of website pages, designing a good example of your website, and good user experience will help you to achieve all of these.
Designing a website for ease of use requires you to provide a visually appealing website with a clearly defined navigation structure. This visual hierarchy helps visitors to move through your website easily and in the most convenient way. The most common design elements used in website usability are the navigation bar, the background image, the website title and the menu. These elements are not only used in the creation of the basic website layout but are also adopted and used in the creation of the best practice for website usability.
Visibility is another major concern for website usability and it is therefore recommended that your website layout is well visible to visitors. This can be achieved by designing for a clear navigation hierarchy, by using the appropriate color combination, and also by ensuring the consistent sizes of your content. Another element which goes hand in hand with visibility is the amount of contrast or difference between colors and images. Making use of images and colors in a contrasting manner can go a long way in improving the usability of your website.
One important factor for website usability is the level of interactivity and ease of using the particular page. This is where the input from the user plays a major role. Before designing your website, it is important that you conduct an in-depth user research and collect feedback from your visitors. By doing so, you will know what their needs and desires are and you will be able to design a website, which meets these requirements.
There are some things which are not actually good for you as a website user. For example, if you are a person who likes to have large pictures and graphics on your website then this may not necessarily mean a good experience for your visitors. On the contrary, having large graphics may take a long time to load and thus may not necessarily mean a good experience for your visitors. Thus, you need to consider the requirements and wants of your visitors before designing a website. In other words, you need to first conduct a usability study and see what are the basic requirements and wants of your audience. With this information, you can then proceed to designing your site.
Another thing which may not necessarily mean a problem with website usability is the use of disabled text services. However, using these services can cause a few problems of its own – such as making the text on websites very small, leaving gaps between paragraphs, and even making the text itself illegible. To overcome such problems, check if the company you are hiring has an in-house team with the expertise to solve these problems. Moreover, make sure that you have an expert on your side who can check whether the text services that you have outsourced are compliant with the ADA guidelines.
Finally, consider the other factors which affect website usability, such as back linking and urls. As you already know, back links and urls can help increase traffic to your website, but only if they are relevant and appropriate. Therefore, it is important that you follow the rules set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) when designing your website and make sure that you don’t get a link or an icon that looks like spam. This way, you can ensure better website usability.