Usability
is one of the key terms that are widely used in web design. In many respects,
it is the most important and vital aspect of any web design.
Why Usability is so important?
It’s a very
normal tendency that if an online web surfer visit your website but find it
difficult to use then he or she may leave and never become customers. In fact,
it’s very important to understand that web design must give its visitors
freedom and choice to surf it properly. A good web design is not just about a
website looking cool and flamboyant. It has more got to do with its role i.e.
the website must be able communicate its goal with as little effort as possible
on the part of the user. Moreover, if the site has well-built usability, more
online surfers will notice because they won't be wasting time trying to figure
out how the site works.
Looking on the other side, a bad or poor design may cause visitors to do any of the following things again and again, like-
Clicking on back button and keep
waiting for a long download.
Wasting time in making a guess as to
where, and what, the navigation is all about.
As a
result, to make your website more visible you must involve potential customers
in its design.
Factors or Steps to Increase your
Website Usability
Nowadays every big and
small business owners or web
development firms and web designers are focusing on different ways to
make their site more usable. Usability has turned out to be the important
factor in web designing
because as long as it remains missing, the site can confuse the online web
surfer. Besides this, it may further detract from whatever the main message,
product or service, you want to convey through website.
Here are few important
points that can help you go a long way to provide or develop a more
user-friendly site:
Alignment and Spacing- Alignment and spacing in web site
design are important factors. It helps in creating a proper order, organizing
the page and groups parts of the website for easy navigation. A proper alignment and spacing of text and
image keep visitor stick to your website and read content. You can easily use
the guidelines in Photoshop to ensure that all your elements are aligned which
can be done by dragging ‘rulers’ from your rulers tab.
Including a Tagline- In terms of web
designing, a tagline is a statement that represents a company’s,
philosophy and mission. It is the most obvious element on a website’s
front page and must
clearly depict the website purpose in one phrase. As per recent statistics, it
has been found that a website has just few seconds to confine an online
visitor’s attention. A website without any clear tagline might find it hard to
keep its visitors’ attention long enough to further browse the inner pages.
Title Every Webpage- Giving title to every web page can be very
beneficial. This small procedure actually ensures your visitors don't get lost
on your website. In simple words, if you title every web page – you directly
help your visitor know what page they are currently viewing.
Avoid Using Extensive Graphics- It’s very important to understand that too much use
of design elements and graphics are always bad for a website. They actually
mislead visitors’ attention. Thus make sure, you only design to improve the web
page not just to decorate it. From a web usability and navigation point of
view, simple and less is always more powerful.
Graphical Navigation- Try to include a text version of graphical navigation
items. When graphics are links, try to make it easier by including meaningful
alt text for graphical links. If you use an icon next to a text link, make sure
both items are clickable. Be very cautious about using image maps as navigation
because visitors often lose track of where they are and where they have been.
Avoid Designing Graphic Elements like a Button- Most of the time visitor see text that is underlined
and looks like links, but are not clickable. By not having any action that the
online web surfer expects actually hampers their interest in website. As a
result, they would think that the site is broken and eventually leave.
Choose Background,
Image Color and Text Color very carefully- You must require taking this point into serious
consideration very seriously. You must understand that if your color scheme of web
design is unappetizing, visitors may leave even if your subject matter content
is very good. For optimum usability, make sure you always check the color
balance, sharpness and contrast of each image. Besides this, also make certain
that web page text color balances with the rest of the page and other images.
Stick to Standards of
Hyperlinks- Try to make the visited link a duller, less saturated
color than unvisited so that the links the visitor hasn't visited or clicked
yet stand out more. Make it easy for your visitors and it won't mess up your web design.
Always Include a Sitemap- Including a
site map webpage and registering a sitemap XML document in search engines can
further increase your web design usability. Though the concept of site maps are
a relatively new website feature but it widely improves web page navigation. It
is a structural representation of a website’s pages and architecture. It can be
a document in any form, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site,
typically organized in hierarchical fashion.
Do Not Overuse JavaScript- With the advent of
JavaScript and the AJAX
Today
website usability is all about reducing and reorganizing the complexity into
small and manageable web navigation process where web designing plays an
important part. Ensuring readability and taking care of the above checking
points will actually help you move in the right direction of designing
user-friendly websites. The bottom-line is - Making your website more usable is
the simply best credit that you can achieve from your visitors.
