Full On Design

Users are simple folk who are easily confused, as a designer or developer its core to our job to make our websites as easy to understand and use as possible. Here are 5 easy ways to improve the usability of your site.

Be Consistent

Having a similar layout across your website helps with user familiarisation, if the layout drastically changes the user will tend to assume they are on another website (users really are that silly, hence phishing scams doing so well).

An example of where most websites fail to be consistent is in add-on packages such as Blogs and Forums. In a recent survey by Full On Design a very high percentage of websites which used a readymade blog (Wordpress etc) or forum (PHPBB, MyBB etc) did not have a consistent layout.

Don’t send mixed/complex messages

24/7 support which is offline, this could confuse users.

As mentioned above, users get confused easily and a confused user is an unhappy user. Putting an excessive amount of information on a single page on a poorly constructed page can make a user think “this is not worth my time” and they will leave.

To fix this, quite simple check how your website reads with a 3rd party and condense your data into as few words as possible (but don’t lose the original message). Really good examples of websites which “get to the point” quickly are Facebook and Apple. Examples of websites which epically fail to get to the point are IBM and Bebo.

Check for errors

Having a big “Error: The code is rubbish” is a big “hack me, I’m an idiot” sign essentially. Make sure your website works the way you intend to before you release the code (This includes cross browser testing). Luckily most server side code has error suppression and client side coding has lots of cheat sheets.

If you are adjusting a large website with a large amount of PHP, consider looking into PHP’s built in Error Handling.

Breadcrumbs

Home page > Section page > Subsection page
Above is an example of breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are an easy way to tell users where they are, where they came from and in some cases where they are going. If you use Wordpress there is a really nice plug-in to create breadcrumbs for you.

Be Clear

eBuyer is very clear about how many steps are left when purchasing stuff.

Remove as much clutter as you can and make sure that your website is easily read. Keep in mind; on the web it’s better to have less useful information than more useless information.

Useful Links

50 Web Usability Tips that Help You Attract and Retain Visitors to Your Website
Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design
Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practices