Website Redesign How to Step 4: Website Usability Planning

Often one of the most overlooked aspects of a redesign, usability planning is actually one of the most significant ways you can get visitors to return to your site. If your visitors can’t easily navigate your site, chances are they won’t return a second time, they'll just move onto a site that can give them what they want quickly and easily.  You need to make sure when you’re redesigning your website that it is accessible to the majority of people, it is easy to use, and that it delivers on its promises.

First things first, what exactly is website usability?

Usability is an attribute that is used to describe how easy a website's interface is to interact with. It is often used to indicate the ease-of-use for a website visitor and should be tested during the design phase of a website's creation.

Why is usability important?

In an extremely competitive market like the internet, usability is a necessity for your website’s survival. If a website is difficult to navigate, people will click away to a site that is more user friendly.

1. Test your old site and get familiar with your competition. This is one of the best ways to ensure that your new design is easy to navigate. By testing your old design, and even your competitors' sites, you can get a good idea of what interfaces work best from a customers’ viewpoint.
2. Compare your site to what works. By comparing your design to relative established usability guidelines you can get a good idea if your website's design is on the right track.
3. Understand who your customers are. You want to make sure that you are communicating effectively with your target audience. This increases the usability for them, and after all, they’re the reason why the site exists!
4. Keep your layout simple. Everyone wants to have an appealing, eye-catching website, but be careful not to let this take away from the way users interact with your site.The busier your design is the more difficult it is for your visitors to use it quickly and easily. When in doubt, a simple layout is a better choice from a usability standpoint.
5. Cut it down to size. If you have done your research, and really understand your audience, then you’ll know what kind of content your audience is looking for. By trimming the content on your website down so that you only have the content they need, you can make it easier for them to get to what they’re looking for efficiently. 
6. Let them search! Search functionality is one of the first features that a visitor will look for if they begin to get lost, can’t find what they are looking for, or are just in too much of a hurry to explore your site in detail. If you have this feature, it means they are less likely to leave your site to find the information they need, and more likely to return in the future because you’ve made it simple for them to find what they’re looking for. 
7. Make navigation a no-brainer. Finding information on your products and services is essential for a visitor to know whether what  your company offers is a good fit for them or not. The entire purpose of your navigation is to make it as simple as possible for your visitors to get the information they require about your company. Having a clear navigational structure that is consistent throughout your website makes it easy for people to get to where you want them to go.
8. Be like Hansel and Gretel. Leaving breadcrumbs for your visitors to follow is a great way to increase the usability of your site. This way, users can keep track of where they’ve been, where they are, and how they can return to previous pages of interest. 
9. Let them come to you. Having your company’s contact information, and “contact us” forms in an obvious place, makes it more likely that users will take the time to get a hold of you and turn themselves into conversions.
10. Watch page loading time. Your visitors hate to wait. Having pages that load slowly, reduces the likelihood that a visitor can navigate your site in a reasonable amount of time.
11. Keep animated graphics to a minimum. Lots of animation can be distracting, and confuse visitors making your site difficult to navigate.
12. More is better—when it comes to webpages that is. It is usually a good idea to have less information per page, and have more webpages on your site, than trying to cram all of your information into a few over-filled pages. Having a clean, basic design and keeping the content on each page to a minimum, stops your visitors from getting overwhelmed.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at May 24, 2010 8:00 AM

Comments

Paul Olyslager

This is a very useful list indeed! Thank you!