5 Tips to Improve Your Website’s Usability
Usability is one of the major aspects of web design. It should be the first step before designing any websites. It does not matter whether the site is complex e-commerce or a simple one-pager with basic information usability should be part of the entire website development process. There are numerous sites that still fail to consider the concepts of usability and have issues that cause inconvenience to the user and their experience on (and of) the site.
Here in this article, I am discussing 5 tips to improve your website’s usability.
Decrease the page loading time
Imagine you are searching for important information but the website is taking forever to load. What do you do generally in this situation? Slow loading time is arguably one of the most frustrating experiences on the web and the average user expects a page to load in less than two seconds. According to a survey by Kissmetrics, 40% of shoppers will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Decrease your loading time by reducing the image sizes. Also, make sure to clean your code and optimize CSS and javascript files. Using a cache can always speed up your loading time.
Effortless Usage
Nowadays users have many options to choose from. If your site is difficult to use users will find a replacement in no time. Your users must use your site with ease. These are few ways to make your site effortless to use:
- Limited scrolling — be it horizontal or vertical
- Decreasing the number of clicks
- Auto filling whenever possible and not asking users to fill unnecessary, lengthy forms
- Making sure that users are able to identify links and call-to-action buttons easily
- Guiding users properly throughout the process
Familiar navigation layout
Users are used to a common way of navigation from other websites so it is not worth trying to reinvent the wheel. Without a simple and recognizable navigation layout, users will become confused and many may choose to abandon the website due to frustration.
Users are used to seeing the navigation bar on top of the page, search icon usually on the upper top right corner, toggle menu on the upper top left corner and so on.
Sticking to this familiar layout will make users feel comfortable when browsing your site unless otherwise you have tested a new way, sticking to a tried and tested formula will guarantee better usability.
Use responsive design
Everday the use of mobile devices is increasing more and more. In 2018 58% of the web visit were from mobile devices. As a result, having a mobile-friendly and responsive site is no longer an option, but is an essential part of your website’s design.
In 2020, when I meant responsive, it is not just a way of making website layout display properly in a mobile device but it to consider every factor of such smaller screens. Those factors vary from device to device but there are common practices. In desktop users usually, click with mouse cursor but on mobile devices, they use their finger. This means your button should be of a good size. Content placement and position should be also managed accordingly.
All in all, you should design with the mobile-first approach.
Better content hierarchy
Imagine being on a website with loads of content and getting lost in the content ocean.
Content is the king but only if you do it right. Remember you have a limited time to hook your users. Usually, users spend less than 15 seconds on your website. If they can not find what they are looking for during that time most probably they will leave and even worse they will never visit your website again.
The best way to prioritize your content is by doing proper information architecture (IA). To make it even more effective you can list the important content of your website and present it to your target users. They will choose what content they would like to see first.
Enhancing website usability is an on-going process. There are several factors that need to be considered in order to enhance usability. These were the important 5 I discussed today. I picked these because they are easy to implement. Feel free to leave your thoughts/comments below.