Web usability is one of the most relevant factors to offer a good user experience and improve the SEO positioning of an online project.
But what does it consist of?
It is basically the degree of easewith which users navigate and interact with a website. That is, the extent to which the website offers an intuitive, secure, simple and even enjoyable experience for visitors.
? The key is to make your audience enjoy their visit on the web. Three main factors must be taken into account:
- Effectiveness: The user achieves his or her goal quickly
- Efficiency: The user manages to meet the need that has motivated his search
- Satisfaction: The user enjoys the visit and feels that the website has exceeded their expectations
Advantages of web usability
Why is it so important to take care of usability? Here are the main benefits:
- Increase your website traffic ?
- Improve visitors’ user experience
- Gives a higher degree of confidence in the website
- Streamlines the user process and enables more accurate data handling
- Reduces bounce rate
- Get longer visits and more interaction
- Increase lead conversion rate
- Allows for more user feedback and communication
- Helps to build public loyalty
- Get visitors to recommend the website, obtaining additional visits.
- Decreases user error rate
- Strengthens corporate reputation and enhances image
- Increase your website sales and company revenue ?
These are just some of the advantages of web usability… Do you know any more? We encourage you to discover them!
8 keys to improve usability
We have talked about what web usability is and what its advantages are, but now… What can we do to improve it?
The truth is that if you put your mind to it, it’s not too complicated. Here are the main keys to reinforce this important factor for your website. Let’s get on with it!
- Quality design
Have you ever visited a website with an old, overloaded or unattractive design and abandoned it after a few seconds?
This is something that happens to most users, so remember that first of all, you have to get in through their eyes.
We recommend you try a simple, elegant web and graphic design, respecting the margins, with an attractive and coherent colour palette, and a simple and intuitive content structure.
Likewise, you must take care of the typography and graphic resources that favour navigation: images, graphics, designs…
- Quality content
Beyond the usefulness and grammatical correctness of the content, it is essential that it is attractive if you want them to read it.
To do this, use hyphens, enumerations, images, avoid large paragraphs and make sure that the text responds to its corresponding title.
And remember:Be useful to your target!
- Linking strategy
Make sure your articles include links to other related pages on your website, encouraging the visitor to stay and make them go through most of the website.
And don’t forget to mention other relevant and related websites in your posts: this will help you to improve the prestige of your project.
- Meets standards
Your website must comply with current usability and accessibility standards. In this way, the user enjoys faster browsing, and you can improve your search engine rankings.
Keep in mind that agility and loading time are fundamental, both to take care of the user experience and to improve SEO positioning.
- Fewer clicks, more success
Today’s visitor tires quickly.
You must offer all content quickly and conveniently. To do so, they must be able to access any page in no more than two or three clicks. Or less!
In this sense, a simple and reasonable navigation menu (without too many levels of depth) can be very useful for structuring the web pages and their contents.
Quality before quantity.
- CTA buttons
Calls to action are precisely what motivate the user to take action.
They are especially useful if you choose bright colours for these buttons (without abandoning the aesthetic line of the website, but making them stand out): reds, oranges…
Choose your words wisely!
- The famous scroll
Every page has a purpose, and avoiding unnecessary scrolling should always be one of them.
Always offer what is most relevant to the user at the top of the page, and what is least needed to meet the objective, below the fold (the part not visible on the first screen of the website).
Use pages with kilometres of information only when strictly necessary: the user reads diagonally and scans, so emphasize first the key elements of each page that help the user and your business objectives.
It works!
- Compatibility
It is very important to adapt the website to different browsers and devices. HTML5 code is very effective in creating a design that is adaptable to different screen sizes and understandable for search engines.
Now that you know how to improve web usability… We encourage you to put it into practice with your project! From Doowebs we can help you with the development of your website. Just contact us for more information about our services.