10 ways to enhance your site’s usability

Many websites have structure, layout and features which are largely unusable for less capable users, such as older people and people with disabilities. What surprises me the most is that, although older people are the fastest-growing segment of Internet users and supposedly have a lot of disposable income, the vast majority of companies struggle to gear up their websites for accommodating the needs and wants of heterogeneous users. There is a a twofold moral and financial incentive for creating simple and intuitive designs as industry studies show that well-designed products and services have the potential to improve customer satisfaction and this in turn allows companies which value good design to exhibit high growth.

So, to walk many website companies out of the dark with regard to web usability, I looked at the research of Jakob Nielsen, the leading web usability consultant, Usability.gov, as well as different usability writers, such as Bill Scott and Theresa Neil (”Designing Web Interfaces“), Jared Spool and colleagues (”Web Site Usability: A Designers’s Guide“) and Steve Krug (”Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability“), and collated a list of 10 most important ways of improving your website’s ease of use. These include:

1. Place a link to the home page on every page in case a user gets lost.
2. Provide a clear and complete ‘about us’ page and ‘contact’ page.
3. Make your most important links visible and easy to read.
4. Eliminate captcha systems or mandatory logins.
5. Create multiple access points to important content like subscription options.
6. Place your advertisements in places where they don’t interfere with the main content.
7. Avoid cluttering your sidebar with unnecessary links or widgets.
8. Provide targeted content and links in the post footers.
9. Use a large, comfortable font and provide space between each paragraph.
10. And last but not least… Once your site is designed, it is also advisable to ask one or more users (preferably with decreased capability) who have never seen your site before to browse it for 3 minutes as you stand over their shoulder and watch without interrupting their utterances. At the end of the 3 minutes ask your user(s) for feedback and diligently note all the comments. This little usability test will not only make you feel good about being more considerate about the needs of the more disadvantaged sections of the population, but it will also give you valuable feedback on the site’s selling potential from a prospective user and focus your attention on achieving your financial goals.

You need to remember that once a user gets to your site you are only a few clicks away from actually selling something or being left forever, so strategically it really makes sense to be more perceptive to users’ usability issues.