In this day and age, it’s critical for your business to have a user-friendly website. If your site is difficult to navigate, many people will get frustrated and your bounce rate will sky rocket. If you take the time to implement a few best practices, you can increase return visitors and boost sales. Here are some of the most important characteristics of a user-friendly site:
SPEND TIME CREATING A USER-FRIENDLY LAYOUT
Seamless Navigation
You may have a strong opinion about your likes and dislikes, but your website is open to thousands of visitors, so what they like is more important.
Short paths (no more than 3 clicks should be necessary to get to a page or content, such as a document to download)
Visible / accessible menu, placed at the top of the pages or on the left and in the footer for parent pages
Orientation: your site should not be a maze and users should always know where they are. Highlight their location in the navigation header.
Contrasting Color Scheme
A user-friendly website also displays good contrast between the background and text. For example, black text on a white background makes your content easy for users to read. If you, on the other hand, had purple text on a blue background, visitors would probably struggle to read. Read more on How to Choose a Good Website Color Scheme.
SPEED IT UP
Fast load times
Few things are as annoying to an online user as a slow loading website. If visitors have to wait minutes for your website to load up, they will likely go to another website. To keep visitors interested, try to have your web pages load in just a few seconds. If your website isn’t loading as fast as you want, there are several things you can do, like removing unnecessary plugins and optimising visuals.
Mobile compatibility
With more and more people visiting websites on their mobile devices, it’s essential to make your website responsive. In fact, Google has made it one of its pet-peeves. Responsive web design is no longer an option, it’s a requirement.
A User-friendly Website is a Readable Website
Well-formated content that’s easy to scan is also important for usability. Instead of reading the content on a website word for word, many users scan certain parts to see if the information is relevant to them. Use sub headings, short paragraphs and bullet points to break up text to make your content simple to scan.
Don’t forget to use visual content, as well. Users like images and videos and have a higher rate of retention when text is paired with a visual representation.
A user-friendly website can mean higher ROI for your business. The goal is not just to attract traffic, but keep visitors engaged and incite them to browse more until they finally convert.
