Designing User-Friendly Sites
Posted on August 15, 2008
Filed Under Web Design Tips |
Having a user-friendly website design is one of the most effective means for both attracting new customers to your online business and retaining them. Not only does it provide a great first and last impression, but it also accelerates their usage of the services and purchase of products on your site. There are many things you can do in order to make your website as user-friendly as possible for your visitors, the most effective of which include the following…
Quick Loading
Try to make your site load as fast as possible. If your home page takes longer than fifteen seconds to load, the customer will most probably move on to another site. You can do this by eliminating all flash content, compressing and optimizing all images, and using only standard, easy-to-read fonts.
Friendly Navigation
Time is money for anyone who works, so try to make your website both accessible and easy to navigate. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of clicks for users to get to where they want, and by preventing broken links, providing a site-map, employing cross-browsing facilities, and employing convenient menus, your customers will be buzzing through pages in no time at all. An example for brilliant navigation management can be see at yahoo.com, where getting from point A to point B is always easy and intuitive.
Appearance
Bear in mind that your customers may be staring at a computer screen for several hours a day, if not more. The last thing they want is to see too bright colors, hard-to-see texts or overly busy web pages. Break up your content into visually pleasing paragraphs or sections, keep the page clutter-free (this means logos, symbols, etc), use standard fonts and ensure that you have a comfortable and appropriate color-scheme.
Contact Details
Make sure that it is easy for customers to find all your contact details – there isn’t anything more frustrating than having to search through the entire site for a simple email address or phone number. A great way to do this is to provide a link on every page alongside the site logo, so that no matter where they are, the customers have quick and easy access to your contact form. Of course you can simply add your phone number at the byline of every page (through the template footer). If you provide customer care (and of course you should) make sure to provide a visible link to the support staff details as can be seen in money-casino.com where an image of friendly support rep is present at every page. Accessibility is also a key strategy in establishing a trusting relationship with your customers.
Valid HTML
As more and more users today browse the net using browser like Firefox, compatibility does not end with Internet Explorer. It is very irritating for customers to have trouble accessing a site because of technical issues. By Validating your HTML, your website will function smoothly on any browser, and can also be more easily detected by search engines. Even msn.com is Firefox compatible..
Professionalism and Accuracy
It should be as easy as possible for the reader to understand your website’s content. One of the biggest mistakes made by some websites with regards to attracting the customer to continue reading (or do business with the company) is having spelling and grammatical mistakes in their text. Basic HTML software offers effective spelling and grammar checks for your website, and it is highly recommended that any translated content be overviewed by a native speaker. And remember, the content is much more important than the graphics – this is, after-all, your business you are trying to sell.
By: Jperry
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