Great Website Usability Tips
Posted by System | Sunday, April 26, 2009
If you're building a website for your business or just for your own personal use, you're going to want to make certain the website is the best it can be. There are several things to keep in mind when designing your website so that is as appealing to as many visitors as possible. Here are some great website tips for making your site as usable as possible. Keep them in mind when you're working on your site.
The most important feature is to have a website that loads correctly on many different browsers. If you have a large amount of java or other code on your site, there's a chance it may not load correctly in older browsers. If that happens, you'll instantly lose those customers who haven't upgraded to the newest version yet. These plug-ins and applets also have a chance of crashing or not loading as they should, which can also make users leave your site. If you absolutely must use an applet or plug-in of some sort, try to create an alternate version of your site without using it and give users the option of visiting this site instead.
This is especially important if you're doing a website in flash. Some browsers don't support as many flash plug-ins as others, so you want to be sure your visitors have access to everything. Also, flash websites aren't always ranked as highly in the search engines because search robots don't see them the same was as they do traditional websites. Keep this in mind if you're looking to achieve a high search page ranking.
Next, you want your website to have a great navigation system. Nothing is as frustrating as trying to get around a website and not being able to easily find the link to the next page or to the section you want to go to. Whether it's a navigation bar at the top or a list of links down the left-hand or right-hand side, you've got to have clear, easy to use and find navigation or people will end up leaving your site.
You're also going to want your website to have a great colour scheme. Sometimes, this means being as simple and plain as possible. Too many colours, colours that are too bright, or colours that make text too hard to read should be avoided at all costs. The best website feature when it comes to colour is to have text that pops out from the background and is always readable. Be careful when selecting background images, too, since they may take up a lot of bandwidth and, if they don't load, may make your text unreadable.
Speaking of images, you're going to want to include as many alt image tags as possible; ideally, each image will have an alt tag. This way, even if the image doesn't load, your visitor will be able to read the alt text and have an idea of what the image was supposed to be. It's not the same as actually seeing the image, of course, but it is still useful.
Another good usability tip is to avoid as many huge videos, images, or music files on your home page as possible. If you have to place these kinds of things on your website, put them on separate pages and link to them off the home page. If you put them directly on your main page, it's going to take it a lot longer to load, and this will annoy some people. Also, believe it or not, there are still some people out there who have dial-up internet connections. They won't be able to open your home page at all if it contains huge images or videos.