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10_Easy_Steps_To_A_User_Friendly_Website
| 10 Easy Steps To A User Friendly Website
As a busy search engine optimization consultant, I don't have a
lot of time to manage my website. But recently I learnt the hard
way about the fickle nature of website visitors and the damage
that having a user-unfriendly site can do to a business. Now I
give my website usability much more priority than ever before.
Here's what happened. I had written a research report late last
year and was selling it as a downloadable e-book via the site.
However, I was relying on an offline press release and links
from other sites to lead visitors to the specific page from
which the report could be purchased. Although this report
resulted in considerable press attention, much of the media
coverage did not include a link direct to my report page, or in
some casese, even my website, meaning that interested parties
were forced to conduct a search for my site.
It wasn't until I received an email from a potential customer
advising me that he had searched my home page and couldn't find
a link to the report that I had my "Duh!" moment. I had
forgotten to include a link to the report page from my home
page! My old website had no site map or site search tool either,
so potential customers finally arrived at my site, only to click
away in frustration after not being able to easily find
information on my research report. Goodness knows how many sales
I missed out on due to this oversight. Embarrassed, I quickly
added a link to my home page and made a mental note to study up
on website usability, pronto.
Since then, I've learnt that improving your website usability
isn't time-consuming, it isn't expensive and it's certainly not
difficult. It simply involves common sense and dedication to the
task. Here are 10 easy steps that anyone can implement to make
their website more user friendly:
1) Create a Site Map
No matter what the size of your website, you should include a
detailed, text-based site map, with a link to every page and
preferably, a short description of what each page offers. An
excellent example of a site map can be found here:
[http://www.seoconsultants.com/site-map.htm]. The advantage of
using a site map is that you don't have to link to every page
from your home page, but you should link to your site map from
every page. Not only are site maps useful for visitors looking
for specific information on your site, but they are great
"spider-food", meaning they are a way for search engines to
easily find and index every page on your site.
2) Use a Logical Navigation Structure
When designing your site navigation menu, use logical headings
and link descriptions. For example, "web site design services"
is much more intuitive to a visitor than "Internet services".
Use Cookie Crumbs to show visitors where they are on your site
at any point. These are headings you often see at the top of
websites and search portals showing what category and page you
are currently browsing (e.g. Home > Travel > UK > Bristol > Bed
& Breakfasts). Guide Visitors to specific pathways throughout
your site. You can do this using Call-to-Action links
instructing visitors what page they should view or what action
they should take next e.g. "Click Here to Order", "Bookmark This
Page", or "View Our Catalogue Now".
3) Check for Errors Regularly
There's nothing worse than browsing a site or following a link
only to find it leads nowhere. Make sure you check your site at
least once a month for any broken links. There are low cost link
checking tools such as Link Defender
[http://www.webposition.com/linkdefender.htm] available to help
you keep on top of this. Make sure your HTML code is designed to
display correctly in different browser versions. Also ensure
that your site hosting provider is stable and reliable to avoid
any unnecessary downtime of your website. Services such as
Internet Seer [http://www.internetseer.com] can help you monitor
your site uptime free of charge. Make sure your site does not
contain spelling or grammatical mistakes. If you're not the
world's best speller, have trusted friends and colleagues check
your site copy for errors. When proofing your site, remember to
take into account regional spelling usage for different
audiences worldwide, e.g. British versus American English. A
webmaster service such as Net Mechanic
[http://www.netmechanic.com] can be used to check for many of
these errors via the one location.
4) Use a Consistent Design and Layout
Common sense rules here - make sure you use a consistent design
and layout for each page on your site. This means using the same
general colour scheme, logo, consistent navigation menu, header
and footer in the same location and consistent link attributes
(e.g. always underlined). This way you never alienate your
visitor or cause them to become confused and lose their momentum
to keep looking.
5) Include a Site Search Tool
A user friendly website provides the visitor with the ability to
search the site for specific keywords. Thought this one was too
hard? Me too. Until I discovered Atomz Site Search
[http://www.atomz.com/search rial_account.htm]. This is a
software program that provides site-wide search for websites of
500 pages or less, for free. It's a quick and painless way to
setup and customize your own site-wide search tool. They also
offer a paid version for larger sites.
6) Ensure All Forms Work
It sounds obvious and it should be. If you're going to make your
site interactive with feedback forms, newsletter sign-ups,
guestbooks and the like, then make sure they work! Double check
each form field is large enough to accomodate even the longest
of names. Think about your international visitors when creating
fields such as Zip Code. Make it clear which fields are required
by marking them with an asterix. Test the form to make sure it
submits correctly and displays the right confirmation message
upon completion.
7) Ensure Shopping Carts are Functional
This is vital for any type of e-commerce site. Ensure you have
adequate product descriptions, pictures, specifications and
crystal clear pricing. Include information on shipping and
freight costs and integrate any taxes within your price list. If
selling internationally, include a foreign exchange calculator
such as the free one provided by XE [http://www.xe.com] for
visitors to compare costs in their local currency. Make sure
your shopping cart pages are protected by SSL or a secure
certificate to give visitors the confidence to reveal their
personal and credit card information without threat or risk.
Provide simple instructions for completing the online
transaction, give them the ability to back out easily and
provide a help email address or phone number on every page of
the process in case they get stuck. For instant transactions,
provide a receipt immediately and confirm their transaction was
successful. As with your online forms, test, test and test
again. It only takes one bad experience for you to lose a
potential lifetime customer.
8) Include Obvious Contact Details
With all the scams proliferating the web these days, people are
understandably sceptical when it comes to online business. To
build trust, you absolutely, positively need to display contact
details prominently on your site. If you're not willing to
provide a way for people to contact you, why should anyone be
willing to buy from you? You should include your business
address (preferably your street address and a postal address), a
telephone number and at least one email address. If you are
concerned about spam email harvesters, you can either hide your
email address within a HTML encoder such as Natata
[http://natata.hn3.net/antispam_encoder.htm] or use a contact
form for people to submit to contact you with (although many
people, including me, find the latter annoying).
9) Use Easy to Understand Language
The Internet is no place for verbosity. People are in a hurry -
they want to find what they seek quickly and easily with the
least hassle possible. You can help them in this quest by
ensuring your site pages use simple language and easy to grasp
concepts throughout. For example instead of "brand-building web
information architects", use "website designers specialising in
brand promotion". Keep the text on each page to a minimum, using
bullet points and sub-headings to get your main points across or
to demonstrate your product benefits. Use the old WIIFM (What's
In It For Me?) adage when composing your body copy to keep the
user's interests at top of mind. Remember your international
visitors by avoiding regional word usage or technical jargon
that could alienate. Want your visitor to take a particular
action? Spell it out for them in plain English.
10) Make it search engine friendly
Last, but by no means least, make sure your site is search
engine compatible. A user friendly site is generally a search
engine friendly site too. Use body text and headings in place of
graphical text. Use a text-based navigation menu instead of a
graphical or drop-down javascript menu. Avoid frames, Flash or
any code that could trip up a search engine spider trying to
index your site. Use logical Title and META tags for each page,
tailoring these to match the content found within. Scatter
target keywords and search phrases throughout your body copy to
give your pages better ranking potential on engines and
directories for related searches. Don't compromise the
readability of your copy to achieve this - hire an expert
copywriter to strike the right balance if need be.
So there you have it. 10 easy steps to making your websites more
user friendly. Now you have no more excuses for avoiding
usability. Implement one of these per week and your visitors
will repay you with loyalty.
About the author:
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank. Kalena was one of the
first search engine optimization experts in Australasia and is
well known and respected in her field. For more of her articles
on search engine ranking and online marketing, please visit High
Search Engine Ranking at
http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com
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