Primary characteristics of the most User Friendly Websites
Although the terminology “user-friendly” seems self-explanatory enough, there is much more to this than meets the eye. When designers and developers are creating websites, making them as user-friendly as possible should be their primary concern along with the appearance of it. However, there is far more to be concerned with when creating a user-friendly website.
5 Key Aspects of a User-Friendly Site
Any eCommerce website must be easily accessible and navigable. So it is important that the person you hire to design and develop your website applies the following concepts:
- Efficiency – your visitor traffic should be able to use your website for whatever they are searching for. If they can navigate through your website efficiently, it will enable them to have a more pleasant shopping experience and they will come back to you again.
- Error reduction – if you have eliminated as many errors as possible, your website will be more user-friendly than others. So if one of your visitors makes a mistake when navigating through your site, they should be able to recover from their errors.
- Learnability – when people find your site for the first time, they need to be able to find the products or services they want quickly and easily. Having a complex website design will deter them from using it. So be sure that it easy to learn and use.
- Memorability – if you want your website visitors to come back again, it needs to be memorable. It’s important that your visitor traffic be able navigate your site quickly and easily whenever they visit it.
- Satisfaction – customer satisfaction is a key aspect when it comes to shopping online. So it is extremely important that your clients or customers are satisfied with your business, your products or services, and your website.
If these concepts are not in place, your website needs some updating. If you are going to have a successful eCommerce website, this is imperative.
7 most important Characteristics of a User-Friendly Website
We oftentimes judge things in our lives based on the first impression we get and this is especially true when it comes to evaluating websites and their usability. First impressions could make the difference between not making many sales and generating repeat business in the future. The following characteristics are vital to having a user-friendly website:
- Aesthetic appeal – your site should be visually appealing and use color, images, and text to create interest.
- Design consistency – other than your home or landing page, every one of your webpages should have a consistent design so it doesn’t look like a different site when the user changes pages.
- Different browser compatibility – make sure that you test your website on different browsers, how navigable it is, and how quickly it loads.
- Ease of navigation – makes it easy for users to find what they need
- Easy-to-fill-out forms – the forms on your website should not only engage your visitors, they need to generate leads.
- Fast loading times – nothing is more aggravating than a website that takes forever to load. Make sure yours responds quickly.
- Mobile-friendly and responsive – there are nearly as many mobile users now as there are desktop and laptop users so your website needs to respond to this type of consumer.
- Quality content – your webpage content needs to be clear, concise, to-the-point, and well formatted. (Remember, content is King.)
- Search engine friendly – if you cannot attract website visitors through the search engines, your website will ultimately fail. Your website needs to maintain good rankings no matter what search engine is used.
- Visual resources – includes images, interesting graphics, and videos in order to inspire visitor interaction and to organize your site
