10 ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR BUILDING A USER-FRIENDLY WEBSITE
Creating a website that is easy for users to navigate is of the utmost importance. To achieve this, a website's structure is vital. In short, what this means is that users should be able to easily locate what they're after without having to wade through a number of pages. The upshot is this: a user won't be able to find something if there's no clue as to where it is, and, as estudiasdouglas.com points out, "Navigation is a poor time for users to think." Furthermore, "the appearance of an element should be informative of its function." Good structure and good navigation are a team effort that begins with the design stage: A well-planned menu and understandable links should top any list of priorities.The use of breadcrumbs is another significant element of clear navigation and structure. Breadcrumbs serve as a secondary type of navigation by helping the user understand their current location on a website. As a user travels deeper into a website, long, compound breadcrumbs (often called "muffins") turn into just the right amount of information and hint at what came before. From a use case perspective, breadcrumbs most benefit those who arrive on a deep page from a search engine and might like to explore more parts of the website while they're there.
What can we learn from this?An easy-to-use website means clear navigation and structure. Clear navigation and structure mean a website is easy to use. If a user enjoys using your site, they will have a good experience. Clear navigation and structure also help a website with appearance. You may have the best content on the web, but if your navigation is bad, people are likely to click away. Or they may give your site a chance but then leave because they can't figure out where to go next. Good navigation and structure help with making the overall appearance of a website more polished and professional.As an increasing number of users access websites with their mobile devices, it is absolutely essential for design to be mobile-friendly.It is crucial to have a fast loading speed. Visitors will quickly bounce off a website if it is not serving them the pages they want in a fast and efficient manner. They won't—even can't—wait around. But when the going is good and the pages are appearing right away, visitors are happily engaged, spending just a little bit longer (sometimes much longer) on a website than they would if its pages were slow to serve up or weren't serving them at all.The website gains a coherent and accomplished appearance from the use of consistent branding and design.Creating readable content is the central component of maintaining the interest of website visitors and allowing them to effortlessly partake in the information the website provides.
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Mobile-friendlyDesigns that are friendly to the mobile experience enter the arena. What a nice thing to see! They are here and ready to work for you and your business. Finally, we can wrap our heads around the notion of what it means to be "mobile-friendly" and how to execute on that coveted, clearly-crafted concept. A foundation has been laid, one that we comprehend on a deep and intuitive level when it comes to websites. They must work across all our various devices in ever more sophisticated and elegant ways. Gone, it often seems, are the days of the poor visitor to our websites who can't get them to do the simplest of things, like add an email address to our mailing list or purchase something from us with a few clicks.It is vital for websites to have designs that work well on mobile devices. These days, people are using their smartphones and tablets to go online more than ever. The issue is that 'going online' doesn't have the same meaning for them as it did ten years ago, or even five. Today's mobile users aren't sitting at a desk with a large screen in front of them. They use their thumbs on a bus, a train, and pretty much anywhere else they can swipe their phones or tap their tablets and instantly gratify their Internet-addicted selves.Mobile-friendly design is crucial for ensuring that a website is user-friendly on all devices. In addition to being optimized for a range of screen sizes and orientations, this involves improving the overall performance of the site on mobile. This mostly comes down to optimizing things like images and other media to load faster, using tools like compression and caching. But the site design also needs to make sure things like interactive forms and buttons are easy to use. If a user can't readily use an image, form field, button, or any other interactive element—which should be easy to do just by touching the screen—then the design isn't truly mobile-friendly.
High speed of loadingAn important guideline for creating a user-friendly website is to have it load quickly. In our fast-moving modern world, people anticipate not having to wait for websites to come up. The ultimate abandonment factor for any website occurs when a user decides (either consciously or not) that their time is not worth the wait; when that happens, the website has to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask if it’s really user-friendly at all—especially when one considers that, in most cases, there’s a good chance that the website wasn't the fastest alternative available to the user in the first place.There is another method to make loading speed better; that method is using a content delivery network. A content delivery network distributes the content of a website across multiple servers. Those servers are placed all over the world. This allows people to load the website faster because there is a server in or near their location. A CDN also helps with redundancy, so if one server fails, another can take its place. This helps keep the website up and running, and it also helps with the speed.
Consistent Branding and DesignCreating a user-friendly website requires that you're consistent in your branding and design. And imparting consistency in those two very important areas means that you use the same colors, the same fonts, and the same types of images across various iterations of the website. ... It's also good if you can be a bit more obvious that it's you and your brand of myopia when someone is looking at your page or any other page on your website. Don't be afraid to use your logo and other brand elements—prominently—all over the place on your site. ... And when I say "consistently," I mean that your logo and brand elements should look the same on every page and in the same places in the layout on every page. ... Users will be more likely to remember and be loyal to you if they trust you.
Readable ContentIf you want to produce a user-friendly website, writing content that is easy for the users to read is very much key. And when we talk about easy reading, we mean writing that is both clear and concise, using language that is a breeze for the average person to understand. The text should also be visually broken up into smaller sections, using a variety of headings, subheadings, and bullet points. Plus, any large blocks of text should be avoided.And then there is the multimedia aspect of easy-reading content. Don't forget to include things like images, videos, and infographics in your site's content. These elements can break up the monotony of large amounts of text, making the content more visually appealing and, when properly used, can serve to help explain things to the reader.
Develop your own website today! Intuitive Forms and Calls to ActionTo design websites that are easy for users to understand, that enable them to accomplish their goals, and that keep them engaged, it is necessary to pay close attention to both the forms and the calls to action (CTAs) that are used throughout the site. This includes being mindful of what information is requested and how it is requested, as well as making sure that the site's CTAs are clear, compelling, and well-placed.Forms should be as easy to understand and use as possible, and they should be used to request only essential information from the user. They should also be accompanied by clear, simple instructions about what the user should do to complete the form and what will happen next. CTAs should be easy for the user to see and understand, they should stand out from other page elements, and they should be placed in spots on the page where the user is likely to be looking. Finally, CTAs should be used in ways that promote conversion—getting the user to take an action that accomplishes the user's goal and the site's goal.
Accessibility and Inclusive DesignEnsuring that web content is accessible and inclusive is vital for a number of reasons. One, it's a matter of ethics, of basic human decency. It's unjust to erect digital barriers that keep people with disabilities from being able to access and use information or services on any website that is not fundamentally problematic to use for those of us without disabilities. Two, it's the law. If a website doesn't meet today's standards for being accessible to all users, it exposes the webmaster and potentially the whole organization to lawsuits and fines. Finally, making content accessible and inclusive is good for the bottom line. The more people you make it easy for to use your site, the more money you are likely to make.
MultimediaWhat is of utmost importance to websites is their appearance. When users access a website, they expect a visually pleasant experience. A visually pleasing website can engage a user on a basic sensory level, but the images, videos, animations, and other multimedia elements on a website must also work together in order to convey the right information. Because users have a limited amount of time and a demand for quick results, high-quality visuals and multimedia are essential for a website's good first impression.Yet, not just any visuals will do. When selecting visuals for a website, it is crucial to ensure that they are, first and foremost, relevant to the website's content. And when relevant visuals are selected, performance is the next important issue to consider. Can these multimedia elements be loaded by a user's current internet connection and device? Are these multimedia elements also conducive to the more abstract idea of a website's appearance and user-friendliness, which ultimately affect how well a website does its job—whatever that may be?
Integrating social mediaIt is absolutely essential to integrate social media into a website. This allows site visitors to share their experiences and engage with social media content in a similar way to doing so on the site itself. The opposite is also possible if a site is not integrated with social media. Do you honestly think that sharing a web page URL in an email message is as effective as sharing a link on a social media site? Don't both methods of sharing get passed along to friends and family online, though in different ways? If it isn't completely obvious, let me say it bluntly: Enhancing a web page for social sharing boosts its SEO because the search engines love, love, love social signals.So, you have to ask yourself this question: If integrating social media into a website is so important, then why isn't every bit of U.S. federal government web content integrated with social media?
OptimizationIt is important to be constantly fine-tuning for the best user experience. Creating a bulletproof, user-friendly website requires testing and updating the site and making sure it is optimized. In the end, a great user experience is crucial. This involves continually testing and optimizing how a website works. It must work well on any device. Usability is a must. And, gathering real-world feedback from the site's users makes all the difference. Are real people having the experience you intended? Can you make their experience even better? That's the result of testing; "data-informed design."Besides examining your website, it's a must to constantly improve it. That means acting on knowledge gained from testing and user feedback. Any number of changes may be required to the design, content, or functionality of the site. These can let you better direct the user experience and fix anything that went wrong in testing. The more issues you identify and correct, the closer to perfect you'll get. And even if you follow all the rules and are really thorough, you're still going to miss some stuff. It's inevitable. But that's okay. Users will let you know.In summary, creating a user-friendly website demands measured thought about many elements—a few of them being navigation, design, content, accessibility, and performance. Incorporating these crucial aspects will yield a smooth user experience, no matter which device or browser a user might be engaging with. Remember also that your site is a channel through which to communicate your brand, "speak" its identity, and espouse its values. If you get right what was contextualized within these three tips, you'll end up with an end product that certainly characterizes the oft-used phrase "user-friendly."
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Emma Kelly
Freelance/Financial Blogger | Affiliate Marketer, PathZen Ventures