Five ways to make a more user-friendly website

 


There is nothing more frustrating than visiting a website and struggling with navigation, either because the site is slow, difficult to use, or virtually incomprehensible. Truth be told, a bad user experience inevitably leads visitors to leave the site, which can lead to unwanted results, especially if your business is entirely on the web.

According to a study conducted by Wed Design Company in Pakistan, 75% of online consumers would prefer to leave a site for that of a competitor rather than tolerate posting delays. She also revealed that 88% of online consumers would never return to a site after a bad experience. This means that you can lose a customer permanently due to small technical issues.

The good news is that building a user-friendly website doesn't have to be a difficult task. So, if you think your site can benefit from some touch-ups, consider the suggestions in the points that follow.

1. Facilitate navigation

When you are sketching out your website, your first goal should be to make it as easy to use and understand as possible.

Here are some tips to help you with this.

Name Each Page Appropriately: When naming your pages, it's best to be fairly straightforward instead of trying to be witty and risk falling flat. If this is a registration page for a particular service, name it accordingly.

Make sure the navigation options are visible: Whatever page your visitor came to your site from, that visitor should be able to find what they are looking for almost instantly. In most cases, a navigation bar near the top of the page should suffice. If you have several different pages, consider adding a secondary navigation bar (usually located at the top right of the page). Navigation hints can also be useful, especially when it comes to helping people understand where they are on the site.

Add a search bar: If your visitors are looking for something on your site, make it easier for them. This is especially important if your site has many pages and a lot of content.

Use call-to-action links: If you want your visitors to go to a specific page, consider adding a call-to-action link with words like "Buy Now" or "Find out more".

2. Optimize content

When a visitor lands on your home page, they should quickly be able to get a good idea of ​​the nature of your business. A few sentences summarizing the benefits of your business should work well. What's more, you can provide additional details on a separate page. Adding additional content that uses terms specific to your industry presents you as an expert in the matter; however, do not bombard Internet users with jargon they may not understand. Use keyword research to find out what terms people are looking for and try to understand their reasoning.

3. Increase display speed

Studies show * that a site's bounce rate increases by 100% when a page load takes at least four seconds and by 150% if it lasts at least eight seconds. However, there are a few ways to speed up the posting process.

Use small images and files: Using large images, videos, and Flash animation files can produce a more elegant site, but it won't be fast. Consider compressing these files or deleting a few. If these are images, you can change the dimensions in Photoshop before uploading them to your site.

Redirects are great, but not always: Sometimes outdated pages are modernized, but links from external sources to those pages are not. Internal redirects help redirect people to the right pages, but if there are too many of them, they can cause unnecessary slowdowns. If you notice this problem, consider reducing the number of redirects on your site.

4. Limit restrictions for your visitors

Internet users should have no difficulty signing up for your services or purchasing your products. Here are some ways to make your site easier to use.

Be Accessible: Not everyone is good at going through a long list of frequently asked questions. Include your phone number, email address, or both so your customers can ask you for help directly if needed.

Be clear about the site's limitations: If you want your web users to fill out a form, make sure they know how to enter specific information. For example, if you want them to enter their phone numbers without dashes, tell them! The same principle should apply to unavailable usernames, shipping restrictions, etc.

5. Subscribe to mobile

The mobile market is booming. In Canada alone, there are currently over 29 million mobile device users *. An incredible 80% of website visits * are from a mobile device. This means that a good proportion of your potential Internet users will discover your site from a smartphone. Make sure the site they find works well on all devices.

Don't forget to run some tests!

After doing some touch-ups, make sure that real internet users are testing. The worst thing to do is to cause more harm than good. Let people test your updates and fix them if necessary.

There are a multitude of technical aspects involved in building a website. Whether you are looking to build a site from scratch or improve an existing site, the specialists at Yellow Pages can help.

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