Creating a website means you want to attract visitors and build an engaged community. To make that happen, the first step is to make the site visually appealing. However, the challenge doesn’t end there. You also need to focus on the site’s usability. After all, no matter how well-designed a website is, it won’t attract visitors if it’s difficult to use.
To achieve this, you need to implement strategies to make the site user-friendly right from the start. That way, it will better cater to visitors, and they’ll enjoy using it. Wondering how to make your website truly appealing and practical for its users? Then check out the various guidelines here for optimizing a website’s usability.
What does website usability involve?
Since the advent of the internet and digital tools, websites have become valuable assets for the growth of businesses and brands. They are created to help promote a company, its services, its products, and so on. They may also simply serve as a source of information for the public. In any case, when a website is created, its goal is to attract visitors.
For this to be possible, several conditions must be met. Among them is ergonomics. This refers to the ease of use of a product and its genuine usefulness to the target audience. In the case of an office chair, for example, we talk about ergonomics when it adapts to the user’s specific needs and provides all the comfort the user requires. The same analogy applies to a website.
A website is said to be user-friendly when it is designed to be practical and easily accessible. It should be easy to use, both for users and administrators. It should also, by its very existence, make life easier for those who use it. In other words, it must provide real added value for users.
While it’s true that this criterion wasn’t very important for a website’s visibility in the past, things are very different today. In fact, according to Google’s guidelines, a website must meet all the requirements to provide an optimal user experience for its visitors. Otherwise, it will not be prominently featured in search results. To help you better understand what this entails, here are the three essential criteria that demonstrate a website’s usability.
The Purpose of the Website
A user-friendly website is one that’s useful to its visitors. In this regard, the first step is to make sure you publish interesting content. Only then will it be able to attract visitors and encourage them to return. You must therefore identify the needs of your target audience—the potential visitors to your site. You need to know what kind of information they’re looking for and what type of content is likely to interest them. Based on this, you can develop a truly effective content strategy. The site will then be able to meet a need, which is the first requirement for its usability.
The website's graphic design
The second requirement for a user-friendly website is its graphic design. It’s true that the most important factor is the website’s usefulness. However, its aesthetic appeal should not be overlooked. In fact, when a website is visually appealing, with beautiful colors and an attractive design, it leaves a more lasting and positive impression. If, on top of that, it is easy to use and provides useful information, then the user is immediately won over. Therefore, the site’s aesthetics should not be neglected solely in favor of its usefulness and usability, as all three conditions must be met for it to be user-friendly.
Website Usability
Finally, the third key factor in identifying a user-friendly website is its usability. This criterion alone encompasses three sub-criteria, which are:
- Effectiveness: A website is user-friendly when it is effective. This means it must enable the user to perform the action for which they visited the site easily and without hassle.
- Efficiency: A website is usable when it is efficient. In other words, it must enable users to quickly achieve their goals. It must offer intuitive navigation, thereby reducing the risk of errors.
- Satisfaction: Ultimately, a usable website is one that satisfies its users. Visitors should be able to leave the site having found what they were looking for. The site must therefore serve its users, not the interests of a single person.
It’s important to keep in mind that a website’s usability is what makes it appealing to users. It also helps your site rank higher on Google, thereby increasing your chances of appearing among the top search results. It’s therefore in your best interest to implement all possible strategies to quickly make your site user-friendly.
What are the guidelines for designing a user-friendly website?
Do you want a website that perfectly meets the three criteria for usability? In that case, you’ll need the help of a digital professional. If the site hasn’t been created yet, the best approach is to work with an experienced developer to build it. If it’s an older site, you can still make it user-friendly. All you need to do is make a few changes while following these guidelines.
1. Establish a clear and logical architecture
When you create a website, you need to manage its various sections. You need to find a way to categorize all the content on the site so that it’s well organized. Be careful, however, not to base your decisions solely on your own preferences. As we mentioned earlier, a website is created first and foremost for its users.
Therefore, you should choose the site’s architecture based on your users. It must make sense from the users’ perspective. Depending on your target audience, you can choose either informal or formal language. In general, to ensure the site is accessible to everyone, terms that high school students can understand are used.
As for the menus, they should be easy to understand and easy to navigate. Also, be careful not to create too many sections, as this could confuse visitors. A maximum of 8 sections in the main menu is recommended. In addition, be sure to highlight the site’s most important content and sections. You can mark them with different colors or use other strategies.
2. Don't overdo it
It’s important to know that with a website, it doesn’t take much to end up with “too much.” You should opt for a minimalist design and layout. Unfortunately, it’s worth noting that on many websites, the pages are overloaded with information and decorative elements. Yes, the site should be useful, but when there’s too much information all at once, it becomes nearly impossible to sort through it all.
A web user who is in a hurry and wants quick answers won’t waste their time trying to find the right information in this “haystack.” As a result, you’ll lose many visitors who will lose patience and won’t return. That’s why you need to make sure to remove anything from your site that might unnecessarily distract visitors and divert them from their goal.
This rule is even more important on e-commerce sites. It’s absolutely essential to make the checkout process as smooth and quick as possible for the user. Endless questions, requests to subscribe to a newsletter, and lengthy registration forms—these are all things that can discourage the user and prevent them from completing their order.
Above all, you should avoid including links to other sites or pages on your checkout pages. Make sure that every element on your site’s pages is truly useful. In other words, include only the essentials and keep it simple.
3. Take Internet users' habits into account
If you want to make your website user-friendly, you need to focus on your visitors—and more specifically, on their habits. Wanting to innovate is usually a good thing, but that’s not always the case here. In fact, visitors very often prefer to stick to their habits. They rarely embrace change. Consequently, if you’re determined to stand out at all costs by changing how your site works, you risk achieving the opposite effect.
Play it safe by giving your users what they're used to. This applies to both the interface design and the way pages are displayed. Don't try to change users' habits unless they ask for it themselves. You can also give it a try if your idea makes the site even more intuitive and user-friendly.
4. Avoid wasting the user's time
At this point, we’ll focus primarily on page load times. There are websites where pages sometimes take a minute to load completely. In contrast, other sites load in just a few seconds. As you can imagine, a user accustomed to fast page loading won’t waste their time if pages take too long to display. To address this issue, it’s advisable to reduce the size of media files on your pages. Other very simple strategies can be used to ensure that users can navigate from one page to another in record time.
Aside from that, saving users time also means improving the navigation experience. The goal here is to make information accessible with as few clicks as possible. Visitors to a website want to quickly find what they need without having to go through a dozen pages. You should therefore provide various options to help your users save time.
For example, if hovering over a category reveals its subcategories and all the products in each one, that’s ideal. It’s much better than having to visit each section only to find that the product you’re looking for isn’t there, then having to go back to the home page to check another section, and so on. You should therefore make navigation as user-friendly as possible to increase your chances of turning visitors into customers.
5. Provide information to the user
If there’s one thing that tends to frustrate website visitors, it’s not understanding what instructions mean—or the complete lack of instructions. For example, imagine presenting a form on your website’s homepage that needs to be filled out. What is the purpose of this form? Is it required to access the site? This information needs to be clearly visible to the user.
Similarly, on e-commerce sites, for example, during the checkout process, you have to fill out forms before confirming your purchase. If you make a mistake, you can’t move on to the next step. Sometimes, a simple error message appears. Other times, the form is completely cleared, and you have to start over from scratch.
The user would undoubtedly be pleased to know what the error is and why the process is stuck at this stage. In short, it’s important to communicate with site visitors so they don’t feel like they’re navigating the site blindly.
6. Communicate clearly
For a website to be user-friendly, it is important to focus on improving the quality of communication. In fact, the language used on a website is very important to its usability. This encompasses not only the words used, but also colors, sounds, animations, symbols, and so on. You should know that all of these elements—in addition to the words—determine how a message is perceived by the recipient.
As for the words themselves, they are of paramount importance. You should therefore prioritize the use of clear, unambiguous terms. Even if you prefer to use icons, be sure to include a brief description or label to guide users.
7. Use a legible font
The worst thing that can happen on a website is for the text to be illegible. You can, of course, stand out by choosing a different font, a smaller font size, and so on. However, be careful not to make things more difficult for website visitors. In fact, when it’s hard to read the text on a website, the vast majority of users will certainly not waste their time there. This is, in fact, one of the reasons people might leave a site in as little as 2 seconds.
So you’d be wise to choose a font that’s easy to read. Avoid colors that are too flashy, as they can end up unnecessarily straining the eyes. Also avoid fancy fonts, because the most important thing is that the information on the site be accessible to everyone. Play it safe by sticking to standard fonts and sizes.
8. Identify the interactive elements on the website
Finally, the last rule to follow to make a website user-friendly concerns interactive elements. A website typically features elements on its pages that can be clicked, edited, or moved. Ideally, these elements should be clearly distinguishable from the others. At a glance, the user should be able to tell the difference and identify which elements they can click on. Otherwise, they’ll have to proceed by trial and error, which can quickly cause them to lose patience.
In addition to distinguishing between all these elements, you must also specify the actions to be taken. For example, if a user needs to move an element into a specific box to achieve a certain result, you must make that clear. Otherwise, a user who has never used the site before won’t know what to do.
Finally, it’s a good idea to clearly explain what the buttons users are supposed to click on are for. For example, on a website, you might see a “Submit” button at the bottom of a page or on a small banner that pops up. What exactly are users supposed to submit? Be more specific by stating, for example, “Subscribe to the newsletter,” “Confirm order,” etc.
As you’ve seen, a website’s usability is essential to its development and visibility. To succeed in this area, you must follow several guidelines, particularly those mentioned above. These are basic guidelines that apply to all types of websites, whether they’re blogs, online stores, or showcase sites. You can find other, more specific strategies to implement depending on your type of website and your industry.
