The term “web usability” refers to how simple it is to navigate and explore a website. Even though it is a broad concept, web usability may be reduced to a few basic characteristics: a site’s clarity, uniformity, familiarity, relevance, and access. In a nutshell, web usability is concerned with making a webpage more user-friendly.
Despite the fact that increasing website engagement and usability should be a top goal for any Atlanta web design company, many websites have difficulties that annoy users and negatively impact their experience on (and off) the site.
Here are seven crucial suggestions for improving the usability of your website:
Reduce the time it takes for a page to load
It’s likely that consumers will be ‘put off’ from viewing your site before the page has fully loaded.
Slow page downloading is one of the most aggravating aspects of the internet, and the typical user wants a page to load in under two seconds. If the site isn’t updated frequently enough, users will leave it and go to another site, usually a competitor.
As per a Kissmetrics study, 40% of customers will quit a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Image optimization is one approach to cut down on website loading times. The photos will load quickly and would not hold down the rest of your sites if you reduce the file size and scale them to the correct size before posting them to your site. Other measures, such as CSS file optimization and browser caching, could help the site load faster.
Keep your site’s look and feel consistent
When it comes to enhancing the design and website usability, uniformity is the most important thing to consider. Maintaining a consistent layout across all pages can help the user get more familiar with your website.
Make your website mobile-friendly
The number of mobile users has exploded in the last decade: according to 2015 Ofcom research, 33% of web users regard their phone to be the most significant tool for getting online. As a consequence, having a mobile-friendly and adaptable website is no more an option, but rather a requirement in the design of your site.
If the reality that many people are using mobile devices to access the internet, such as tablets and smartphones, was not enough to convince you to have a responsive web design, the fact that Google penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-friendly must. You could be harming your results and even losing a customer if you don’t add responsive elements to your website.
Make use of a well-known navigation scheme
Visitors would become puzzled if the navigating is not simple and recognizable, and many may depart the site out of irritation.
It’s worth noting that the majority of users prefer a specific navigation arrangement, thus it’s pointless to try to reinvent the wheel. Users are accustomed to the site’s straightforward navigation bar, which includes links to major sites and simple, succinct phrases to distinguish the pages.
Users will feel more at ease when exploring your site if you stick to this familiar look. Even though there is no hard and fast rule when it refers to navigation, unexpected layouts rarely work, so keeping to a tried-and-true formula will ensure better usability.
