The average user will spend less than a minute on your site to find what they’re looking for before they decide to abandon you. How do you make sure they don’t? With a fine tuned website design that enhances your usability and overall user experience.
Good usability means your website is doing the job in helping users get to the information they’re after with ease. So, not only do you have to grab their attention from the moment they land on your site, you also need to ensure they can easily navigate their way around in as few clicks as possible.
Usability testing is a great way to understand how users interact with your website and identify ways to improve your website design for better usability. There are also some common mistakes that you can spot yourself, so here we go:
Slow page loads
The quicker your website can load the better. Users don’t have time to wait around and the expectation is, if it doesn’t come up within 2 seconds you’ve lost them. Quite literally every second counts. Images that haven’t been optimised properly are a key culprit to your lag time, so it’s worth checking out.
Too much noise
People scan websites, so a site design that overwhelms the eye is not doing you any favours. Familiar with the phrase less is more? A cluttered design, content that is difficult to read due to terrible layouts and poorly written copy, with no obvious calls to action all contribute to flaws in your site’s usability.
Invisible links
Don’t you hate it when you think something is a link and it’s not, or the links on a website aren’t obvious enough? By this we mean highlighting the text so that it’s different from the rest of the text, so you actually know it’s a link. This is particularly important for mobile users who are viewing sites on smaller screens. Also making sure your clickable areas (such as buttons) are large enough, is something to take note of.
Nowhere to search
If users know what they want but can’t be bothered looking around your site, they will automatically utilise search if it’s there to locate it. Not all websites require a search function, but if your site is content heavy, includes a blog or is an ecommerce site, having a search bar is essential to improve your usability. And it’s easy enough to do if you have a WordPress site, with its built in search functionality.
Overcomplicating your forms
Remember how we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for users to get what they need from your site? Whether it’s a newsletter subscription, resource download, webinar registration or request for more information, your forms should be designed with the least amount of fields required. It’s a fine line between how much data you want to gain from a potential customer verses what they really need to provide. Tailoring your forms for mobile users is also a must. There’s nothing worse than a form you can’t fill out on your mobile – am I right?!
What, no contact information?
It’s a no brainer really but it does happen. Not only is it bad customer service, but also your credibility becomes questionable if you don’t provide any contact information. In many cases, visitors will come to your site with the purpose of getting in touch with you, and if they can’t, well, we all know the answer to that.
Simple fixes like these can do wonders to improve your site’s usability. Bottom line, if you can provide visitors with a well designed website that is easy to use and provides a good user experience, chances are they’ll return and convert or become a loyal customer.
Is it time for a website design review? Give the Perth website design professionals at Cloud Cartel a call today.
