William
Every business requires a professional and user-friendly website in the digital era for an online business presence. However, it can not be very easy for those that have never handled a website before. A website can play a significant role in boosting business sales. It can help build trust among clients or turn them into potential customers.
It is now more critical than ever for businesses to have a user-friendly website. A website only allows a business to be found on the Internet and also allows for advertisements and sells goods or services to local and international customers alike. However, many owners feel disappointed because there is little goal conversion from their website. And this happens because your website is not user-friendly for potential customers. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the website is designed from the user’s perspective.
Here are seven crucial tips to make your business website user-friendly:
Make Mobile-Friendly:
According to IBM’s mobile transaction report, eighty-five percent of online people believe that the mobile website should be as excellent or better than the computer version.
However, now more than half of the internet searches are carried out via mobile devices. Thus, you can wave farewell to users who leave the boat in seconds when they have to pinch and zoom to access details on your mobile Web site. Responsive design is a must for brands looking for a mobile experience and making it easy to access and display content, so make sure it is integrated into your design before you begin designing your website.
Make a Fast Loading Website:
When it comes to user experience, Google’s study shows that faster site speed leads to happy users, improved productivity, and users would like to spend more time on your website.
Also, Kissmetrics research has shown that if a website takes longer than three seconds to load, 40% of users will leave a site. 47% of users expect to load a page in less than two seconds.
Overall, the site’s speed has a more significant effect on user satisfaction than the additional “bells and whistles.” No matter how amazing a website looks, if it loads too slowly, the user moves away.
There are many ways the website can speed up. Remove all additional elements that are no longer used to provide a fast-loading website, like too many videos and other images. Many websites have different components that heavily load the site pages, challenging in developing a user-friendly site.
Another efficient way of decreasing the load time on your website is by compressing the codes. To do this, download some zipping software like GZIP, compress all the files together. You may reduce the HTTP responses this way. Remember that more HTTP responses result in more server traffic, slowing down a website.
Create a Simple Navigation:
Nothing is worse than a website with frustrating or disorganized navigation. Complicated navigation systems provide far too many choices for people to decide to exit your website. It’s essential to make sure your visitors can find what they are searching for. Otherwise, they have no reason to stay on your webpage; instead, they are likely to bounce and find a rival that provides a superior user experience. It will allow you to create designs that look better without sacrificing user experience or maximizing conversion rates.
When we talk about the hamburger navigation menus scheme, it is essential for making a mobile-friendly website. However, it is easy to navigate the website for computer users. For all computer users, all the navigation icons are easily visible in the static bar on the computer website. Still, if we think about making a website mobile-friendly, we will also have to give the user a navigation scheme according to the mobile screen. This hamburger menu scheme allows the user for direct navigational access. It means the user can click directly to the web pages they want; instead of having a predetermined order that they must process before getting to the desired screen, usability and velocity are the significant benefits of this. Most website users use this navigation scheme.
It is an icon used on a website that opens to display a navigation menu when pressed. It’s a stack of three horizontal lines that resemble a hamburger.
There are few things that provide a good user experience to your users, all the navigation headers and subheaders need to be clearly labeled (is it obvious what the user would find in this section?), grouped into logical classes (do all these pages belong together?) and visually separated (is it evident that these are different categories or is it all too tightly bundled up?). A search bar function is also an essential user interface feature that quickly accesses certain areas or information.
Build Clear CTAs:
Clear Call-To-Actions (CTAs) should be used on the website to help your users complete their tasks. A CTA button exists as an interactive element that induces a user to take specific steps, such as making payments or submitting an online application. However, having clear CTAs buttons alone is not enough; It must be visible and apparent.
There are a few elements that users should pay attention to while making a website:
Colors and Buttons shape: Various colors and shapes in the human psyche have various conceptual meanings, so study them extensively before engaging in design. Most buttons are shaped like horizontal rectangles, as they are often perceived as clickable buttons.
Size: A CTA button must be big enough to draw attention but not so big to destroy your text hierarchy and layout.
You can push visitors to take action by adding a simple call-to-action on every page. A few examples of clear CTAs are:
- “Subscribe”
- “Try for free.”
- “Get started.”
- “Learn more.”
- “Join us.”
Make Online Forms Systemic:
Whenever users want to sign up, make a payment, or subscribe to your website’s newsletter, they need to fill out a form. However, forms are one of the most common prevalent friction and drop-off points for site users? Avoid this by following these basic rules for creating powerful online forms:
- To help users complete the information correctly, provide visual cues and tooltips such as colors, information pop-ups, and example field text.
- Provide simple CTA buttons like ‘Send’ or ‘Pay Now’ to ensure that the user knows what will happen.
- Complete with a confirmation message like ‘Thank you, application submitted’ to reassure users that the form’s completion has been significant.
- For instance, long forms can cause visitors to leave a website. Short forms come with their drawbacks: they provide users with little business data and are less stable.
It can be hard to balance user and site needs when designing forms.
Forms must be sufficiently clean, clear, and usable to gather user information that your site requires.
On different Browsers Test Your Website:
All browsers are not the same. Few are known for good performance, while others offer a large variety of features. This disparity can lead to websites that work in some browsers function as intended but not in others.
The reason this occurs is to do with how coded each browser is. For instance, some newer browsers may not be compliant with outdated features, which creates issues on older websites. Even if the website’s functionality remains intact between browsers, certain aspects of its design might still not render faithfully.
Although your business website should work well on Google chrome, you should test the website on other browsers. Some of your potential customers use browsers other than Google chrome. So, check how your website looks on every browser. It should look equally impressive on all browsers.
So, do not be happy with just testing the functionality of your website on Google chrome. Instead, test it on the three most popular browsers on the safe side: Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox.
Apart from this, check on the Apple and Android mobile devices also.
When you test the site, you may face some obstacles, such as the site not loading properly due to flash while checking on mobile devices. In that situation, you can redesign the website explicitly for mobile access.
Show Social Sharing Icons:
People want to share information that is both useful and exciting. If no social media icons appear on your web pages, you will lose social traffic.
These icons allow the information to be shared directly from the site. So, not only having a dedicated business account is enough but also having all the icons like Twitter and Facebook in the right place on the website as well.
Conclusion:
All points mentioned above will help you to make a user-friendly website. Test it all and try to see your website through your target audience’s eyes. Eventually, your site will become more comfortable to use for your specific site visitors and potentially lead to more sales or new customers.
