10 Powerful Tips to Improve the Usability of Your Website
“Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that’s completely inaccessible.” – James Dyson
When designing a website, it is important to keep in mind the fact that not everyone using the website is going to be as technically inclined as you are. The safest way to go about designing a website is imagining that you are making it for extremely young children (just don’t use overly bright colors and condescending text). Everything about the website should be intuitive, and browsing it should come as naturally to the user as browsing one of his favorite websites.
But usability isn’t just the responsibility of the designer. Sure, as a designer, you ca offer up a brilliant website for the owner (who perhaps was you all the time) to post content on, but it’s all for nothing if the content isn’t well thought-of. This is why we’ve decided to do a bit of research, and find some great tips for improving your website usability.
On this list, you will find tips for both designers and content creators, making sure both parties get a bit of help in creating a great, usable website.
1. Get to the point
Like we said, the website’s design can be masterful: good looking, easy to browse etc., but that isn’t worth much if the content is lacking. Users will quickly loose interest if the content isn’t readable, and by readable we don’t mean “not writing articles in Webdings”, we mean writing good, relevant articles, that are also properly edited.
This means avoiding long paragraphs, being to the point, making the article scannable, and using simple words. In short, it’s the “kill your darlings” advice applied to online article writing.
2. Headings are your friend
Of course, sometimes articles have to be long. It is, perhaps, in the users best interest that you give him all the information so that you will get your point across, and properly “advise” him. But even if that’s the case, you need to make the reading experience as pleasant and easy as you can.
Essentially, this is a variation of the “proper editing” theme. Using headers neatly splits you article into shorter, more readable chunks (like list articles), making it much more accessible for the user, and much easier for him to retain the information you’re trying to transmit.
3. Background color and text contrast
We will admit that this is a fairly obvious entry, but we still think it’s worth mentioning since contrast is paramount to how readable a text is. We would also like to add that you should think of what colors you’re going to use on you website, based on your website’s target audience, and that you might consider other contrasts, other than the classic “white background and black text”, as although it makes the text really stand out, it can easily tire the eye.
4. Make navigation easier
This tip is aimed directly at web designers. It is extremely important to think of people using the website as first-time users, seeing as everyone coming into contact with the website will be, at one point, a first time user. By making the act of browsing the website simple and intuitive, you raise the chances of transforming a “first-timer” into a frequent user, and frequent users are what keeps a website alive.
Best thing to do, if the website is supposed to have a lot of content, is categorize that information, using simple words, so that the user can reach it in as few clicks as possible.
5. Be coherent
A tip for bloggers: stick to what you know. You might think that by covering a wide array of topics, you will be getting traffic from a wide array of audiences. It sort of make sense, on paper, before you take into account all the factors that make humans human, and not traffic generating machines. Sure, by doing this you will get “popularity spikes”, but your average will still be very, very low.
That’s why should choose a target audience, and stick to a few closely-related topics, and build a name for your website in those areas, rather than just being a mediocre blog that tackles whatever is popular that day.
6. Make text scannable
We’ve mentioned making the articles scannable in the first entry on our list, so to emphasize just how important it is, we’ve made an entirely separate entry just about making text scannable.
According to an admittedly old study by the Nielsen Norman Group, 79% of people reading on the web merely skim through web articles, as opposed to reading it word-for-word. That means that catering for skimmers is, in we can’t stress this enough, extremely important. The same study shows that in doing so,
7. Carefully selected images and image placement
The look of a website is an integral part of its appeal. That’s why choosing good quality images for your website and posts should in no way be an after-thought. One way you can achieve this is by getting a stable image resource website from where you can get high quality images, that is why it’s worth investing in a paid stock photo account.
8. Have multiple navigation options
Different people are used to different ways of navigating a website, and that’s why giving first-time users several browsing options for your website can really enhance their browsing experience. Placing the same link in different, important areas of your website helps cater for several types of user, and makes sure that anyone can find the information that they are looking for in no time at all.
9. Make links user-friendly
Source links are an important part of content creation, as it gives your articles credibility, it helps create transparency, and it also gives interested users the chance to further research the topics they might be interested in.
Things you can do to make links more user-friendly include showing what links have already been visited, helping the user to not open duplicate tabs, and using link titles, so that the user knows where the link will take him.
10. Mobile-friendly design
We browse the internet a lot, and a significant part of our web browsing is done via our mobile phones and tablets, and we are pleased to say that web design is finally adapting to mobile browsing. Our last entry on the list is more of an encouragement than a tip: keep up creating mobile-friendly websites. Horizontal scrolling is a blight that needs to be eradicated. Fast.
That concludes our list of tips for improving your website’s usability. If you want to check out more tips, be sure to click on the items’ source links to check out a few more great usability tips articles.
Also, don’t forget to give us your thoughts on our article, in the comment section below.
On point 6, you seem to have misplaced part of your second paragraph. This sentence is never finished: “The same study shows that in doing so,”
Interestingly, though, the fact that no one noticed this yet proves that most people only skim articles, and few actually read them.