When visitors land on a website, their experience should be as easy and simple as possible. Websites that aren’t designed properly often place low in the search engine rankings, and with good reason. If your website doesn’t rank well, it prevents people from seeing it and can affect your engagement levels drastically. For anyone interested in making a website more user-friendly, the following tips might prove useful.
White space is important
Users do not want to go to a website filled with huge chunks of text and no white space. Since some people are probably accessing the website via a mobile device, having little white space can be a huge drawback. It’s a good idea to have short paragraphs with white space in between. Google recently put out an update that is leading to well-optimized mobile sites ranking more highly in search results, so it’s time to optimize for mobile viewing as well.
Keep the site fast
When users arrive at a site, they’re usually not willing to stick around if the page loads slowly. Since many people are accessing the site through their mobile devices, slow loading usually translates into rapid departures from the site.
Make links visible
Everyone knows what a hyperlink looks like and what it does. When users come to a website and see the familiar blue hyperlink, they know to click on it. Some web developers have recently taken to trying out other colors for hyperlinks, but there’s no need for that. Visitors accustomed to the usual hyperlink might not know to click on a different color.
Powerful headings
When a visitor comes to a website and scans the page quickly, powerful headings often impart enough information to pique someone’s interest. Since keeping visitors on the site as long as possible adds up to increased rankings, those headings are a valuable tool.
Periodically check the site
While many people think that once a website has been built and begins functioning it will stay that way, but nothing could be further from the truth. As additions and deletions take place on the site, links sometimes break and that means a user might click on a link and get a “Page Not Found” message. Web developers should run a quarterly check on the site’s links to ensure the user will be directed to the appropriate page and not be disrupted by not finding the right page.
These tips are designed to make websites as user friendly and functional as possible. Visitors arriving at a well-designed site will likely spend more time and follow potential “Call to Action” requests, as opposed to anyone landing on a site that is not as functional.