A user-friendly website makes a good first impression on the users visiting the site for the first time. Most website owners pay attention to content ignoring the usability part. However, usability improves your website’s performance, leading to enhanced traffic, ranking, and a boost in revenue & conversion rates.
Your website should provide seamless usability, apart from looking good. The right design elements will make your website scale higher in the web space. So, start by improving your site’s usability by choosing the best user-friendly elements.
Which Web Design elements are important to make a website user-friendly?
A few of the web design elements essential to making your website user-friendly are a well-structured website layout, faster speed, clean coding, simple contact forms, and a pleasing color scheme. Engaging content, website responsiveness, and high-quality images are some of the other factors that you need to consider as well.
Contents
- Which Web Design elements are important to make a website user-friendly?
- Web Design Characteristics of a User-Friendly Website
- 1. Well-planned Website Structure
- 2. Mobile Responsiveness
- 3. Faster Loading
- 4. Complete Accessibility
- 5. Formatted Content
- 6. Better Navigation
- 7. Aesthetic Appeal and Visual Resources
- 8. Mark-up and Clean Coding
- 9. Error Handling
- 10. Usable Contact Forms and Colour Schemes
- To Summarize,
Web Design Characteristics of a User-Friendly Website
1. Well-planned Website Structure
Website information visible to users must be organised and well-planned. If the website structure is not proper, it may turn away potential clients/customers. So, plan your website’s layout and different categories in a structured manner.
For example, Homepage → About Us → Services → FAQs/Careers → Contact Form
A structured website makes it easy for users to find the information they are looking for. For a website with a lot of content, a well-planned structure plays a key role from a usability perspective. However, ensure to keep the structure simple and do away with unnecessary design elements.
2. Mobile Responsiveness
Most people use their mobiles for surfing the internet and seeking information from sites. As the access to the internet connection has increased, the demand for a responsive site has also increased. If users can’t read the content of your website through their mobile devices, it may affect your conversion rates.
Always opt for a mobile-friendly theme and layout while creating a website. Also, check how your website appears on the phone. You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see how mobile-friendly your site is.
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3. Faster Loading
According to research, if a website does not load in two or three seconds, the users will leave the website. Slow loading time also hurts your traffic and ranking. A faster-loading website has a higher chance of ranking on Google search engine.
- You can improve your website speed by minimizing the CSS and JavaScript files.
- Compress your website images, and remove all the unwanted plugins and tools.
- Use a handy tool like Pingdom to check the speed of your site. It will provide helpful suggestions on how to increase your site’s speed.
4. Complete Accessibility
Accessibility is essential for usability. Your website should also be accessible to disable and blind people. As a website owner, you need to make sure your site is accessible to all people and not only a specific lot.
Special users use the screen readers for internet access. Use simple 508 web design techniques to become compliant.
Accessibility increases your chance of getting better visibility. Good website traffic also increases the conversion rate.
5. Formatted Content
A new user visiting your website won’t read every site detail and content. Most users skim through the content to get the gist. For this reason, it is important to format your content to increase visibility.
- Your site content should focus only on relevant information.
- You need to make use of correct headings and subheadings.
- The paras you write under the headings should be concise and brief.
- Do make use of lists and pointers in your formatted content to improve user-friendliness.
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One of the main aspects of website usability is navigation. Try keeping simple options like HTML and JavaScript in menus as they work best and appear constant to all popular browsers. Your website navigation must be completely clutter-free.
- A user should find your site navigation simple. A cluttered website can make the user abandon the website.
- Consider a sub-navigation option or a drop-down menu.
- For large websites, you will need to plan your navigation to be seamless to make an impact.
- Add the search feature with an informative header and footer option.
7. Aesthetic Appeal and Visual Resources
Aesthetic appeal attracts users and increases website traffic. An offbeat website always stands out from its counterparts. Also, a visually pleasing website helps users to remember the site.
- Pay attention to how you use images, colour, and text.
- You need to use the best color elements to make your website look refreshing. You can’t use bold colours with bold text. Contrasting colors and text look good on-site.
- Make use of visual elements like videos and images. A website without images is not appealing.
- Interactive visual designs can also help you organise your site better. It will inspire engagement and break up your content for easy reading.
Further reading: Amazing sites that offer Free stock images for web designers.
8. Mark-up and Clean Coding
Make your website adhere to web designing elements to improve usability and reliability. A website with a valid mark-up and clean code will load at a faster speed.
It will also be consistent across all platforms and web browsers. The best part, you can locate problems and fix them in record time.
Clean code and structure ensure that your website is easily accessible to users and search engine crawlers. Discuss this with your web developer while building a website, as it is one of the essential web design features.
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9. Error Handling
Your website usability can increase with good error handling. Also, descriptive on-screen messages are important for website user-friendliness.
A web developer should handle the codes correctly at the basic level, so there are no code errors later. A website that handles codes correctly is free from all bugs and technical glitches.
By displaying the correct error message, you can enhance the user experience. You also need to pay attention to all inline errors to make your website work efficiently.
10. Usable Contact Forms and Colour Schemes
Contact forms are one of the best website features that improve site usability. They allow users to interact with the website and connect to the business. Dynamic contact forms can also help generate new leads. A potential client may connect with you via a contact form. You need to make sure the contact forms are accessible. Do use correct labels and validation.
To Summarize,
Apart from the above characteristics, you need to pay attention to other user-friendly elements as well. User-friendly elements include a graphical user interface, visual cues, descriptive navigation, and complete customization.
Consider your user base when you design elements of your website. You need interactive and dynamic elements to cater to young people.
Interaction and navigation are features of the website that should be a top priority. A mobile-friendly website is more user-friendly, so consider a responsive design. Also, by improving usability, you offer your site visitors a seamless experience.
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