The purpose of web design is not just to make a website attractive, but practically useful as well. Incorporating usability to a website helps users find information they need when they want. Usability of a website increases companies' value.
Author: John k. Taylor
The purpose of web design is not just to make a website attractive, but practically useful as well. Incorporating usability to a website helps users find information they need when they want. Usability of a website increases companies' value. Hence, there are many companies which spend thousands of bucks on usability testing and researches. However, you don't need to spend on usability experts and expensive equipments to achieve usability. Read this article and you will find top six usability tips for web design.
Include Site Search
Site search on a website is a very useful element for users. Often, users look for site search option in a web site to find items they fail to find at first attempt. Place one such option on the top of the web page in your web design. For easy operation, make it 27 characters wide.
Place site maps
Site maps are the structural representation of website architecture and its pages, which meliorates web page navigation and is also useful in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). Site maps can be in any form in a web design, document or a web page with hierarchal lists of pages on a website.
Tagline is mandatory
Tagline represents philosophy and objective of a business. Without a tagline it is hard to retain visitors longer on the page. According to statistics, websites gets only eight seconds to capture visitors' attention and inspire them to browse inner pages. Hence, it must be included on the front page of a website.
Avoid use of Extensive Graphics
Excessive use of graphical elements can distract the visitors. A web design is meant to improve the web page design and not to decorate it with complex design. As far as usability is concerned, keep your web design as simple as possible.
Convince with Meaningful Feedback
Feedback on a website is a way to communicate with users that helps them understand the error or cause which is restricting them to access the site. Hence, convince your users with meaningful feedback. For an instance, if there is an error on the page instead of writing 'Error occurred' write error message to make users understand the problem causing error and the actions they can perform further.
Don't force your visitor
A user must get the freedom of doing what he wants. Don't force your users to complete any operations in a web design, like registration, filling out forms, browsing, etc. Let them cancel any operation in the mid way if they want. Rather guide them with a specific workflow. Also, avoid using Javascript links as it breaks the workflow. Besides, make sure that the visited links changes the color, as it may also breaks the navigational design.
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