Does Your Website Have What Your Visitors Want? - What Makes a Site Usable?
(Page 2 of 4 )
How easy is your site to use? Do visitors have to hunt for things and think about how to use them? Web surfers have come to expect certain standard practices, used by a large number of websites. In many cases, these have become standard practices because they make sense. In general, you want your website to be instantly usable by visitors, so they can find what they're looking for intuitively. They don't want to have to think about where things are or what they need to do to accomplish specific tasks (such as making a purchase). A number of factors contribute to giving your visitors the best possible experience. These include your site's design, information architecture, navigation, functionality, accessibility, and content.
Let's start with your website's design. A recent study determined that Internet users could tell whether a website was easy on the eyes or jarring within a twentieth of a second. If your website is poorly designed, your visitors could decide to click away literally within the blink of an eye. It may seem boring to adhere to standards such as blue, underlined links, top and side menu bars, and logos in the top, left-hand corner, but they make your site more usable. Visitors know what to expect.
Using a consistent standard in your website's design is just the beginning. Design includes points such as visibility and contrast. Can a visitor seeing your site for the first time easily find and interpret sections for navigation, advertising, content, search, and so on? Making a web page easy to read means a lot more than making sure all the text is visible and in a comfortable font. You must balance text and images, and make sure that the various sections of a page (and their purposes) are easy to distinguish. Consistency has been called the hobgoblin of little minds -- but when it comes to your website, it's more like a lifesaver, a combination of map and territory that makes a visitor comfortable enough to be willing to stay.
Next, let's take a look at your site's information architecture. This involves how you have organized the information on your site. If you have organized it into an intelligent hierarchy, starting with broad topics and focusing down to narrower ones, your visitors will have a much easier time finding whatever they're looking for. If it is not set up properly, your visitors will become frustrated, not find what they want, and go elsewhere.
Next: More Usability Factors >>
More Search Optimization Articles
More By Terri Wells
/ 13 
