Until you are a well equipped web usability designer, you will never be able to deliver the exact expectation to the users. It is very vital for a web designer to consider the right usability to the visitors. A website that is usable will provide more experience and, which will in turn enhance satisfaction. You must ensure that your customers are well satisfied and that they will be able to visit the site again.
The Key to Being a Good Usability Designer
Deploy Visible Clickable Areas
The main ‘gate’ to another site, page or location from the main page, is the hyperlink. Hyperlinks matter a lot in a website, therefore, they should be made friendly enough. They should be easy to click, and by that, you will need to make sure that they are visible enough. If you include a small link that is not clear enough, the visitors will strain to see it. They might even not realize if it is a hyperlink. A large enough link will easily work for a user when they roll the mouse over.
Number Your Pages Appropriately
Splitting content on different pages is called pagination, which is commonly found on sites that have many listing items. For instance items in an online store or photos in an online gallery. Pagination assists in easing things up by splitting the items in several pages. This also increases the visual display and a faster download speed.
Another form of pagination is that of articles on a blog. This is done because the article might be too long, which needs pagination to shorten it. Also, extra long articles always seem boring and splitting the page would make it more interesting. You should link your pages to their relevant locations. For instance, if one clicks on the “3” page, they should expect to be redirected to a third item. Also, they could expect to be taken to a different page, at least not the same.
Never Duplicate Page Titles
The web title of every page is vital. These are the text written in the <title> tag that is inside the <head> inside HTML. There are some designers who come up with basic title on the template of a website. They end up using the same title throughout the site coding. This is not recommended since the title will mis-communicate the right purpose of a site.
An appropriate title will communicate a lot of content of the page that is on the view. That will help people know if they are on the right page. If you insert similar titles, which result in wrong titles, that would inconvenience the user. And furthermore, such pages are also displayed on the SERP – Search Engine Result Pages. You should therefore name each page accordingly and avoid duplicating.
Have a Good Copy
A good usability designer should only think of creating an elegant website, rather, you should have a good copy of the website. In this case, copy means the entire content on your site. When you think of creating a good copy, you will need to comprehend the behavior of visitors on a website page. It is absolutely difficult for people to view everything on your page. As a matter of fact, people will barely read content from top to bottom. Rather, they will read a small section, jump to another as they move on.
Basically, people tend to view only captivating content, or section.
However, here is how you can successfully attract the attention of the users:
- Create a number of focus points. Points of focus are the sections in a page that draws attention of the users. You might do this by including bold, attractive colors with large enough fonts. You might also think of using images in order to draw more attention of the visitor.
- Accompany a description for every focus point. The visitor must understand the appealing content in a flash, without having to read through it. You should keep the information concise and attractive enough and avoid mysterious headlines. That might annoy the visitors.
- Ensure the Remaining of the text is brief and easy to understand. You should give out only the essentials and get rid of unnecessary content.
Always ensure you have a friendly content that visitors can follow easily without straining on understanding what it really means.
Allow Interaction
It is important to get in touch with the visitors, especially if you want to build a good rapport and popularize your site. If you also want to improve your customer loyalty, you will need to consider the user engagement. Even though you might be able to answer to the customers questions and needs, that might not really solve the issue. In fact, that is more of customer care, but not really customer service.
There must be a way that the users can get in touch with the visitors. To make that easy, you should include the correct contact details of the company. If it is the email address, it should be an active one, and if it is a phone number, ensure it is correct and functioning. A usability designer would make it better if they included a chat feature, to enable an instant engagement with the users.
Make The Search Tool Visible
Many users tend to strain a lot when they are looking for a search box on a website. Most of them are used to find the search box at the top right corner while others are on the left. Whichever way you design your page, you must ensure the search box is at the right position and visible enough. Most of the sites need a search box, which should be the first thing that a visitor should see when they visit your page.
Designing a website is not all about being extra stylish and spicing up the pages to attract the users attention. Yes, this is an important factor, that will ensure you have a number of visitors streaming in your site. However, it would be best if the users find the website useful enough. A usability designer should mind how useful the site will be to the visitor and not more on attractiveness.
