Web Development: 4 Creative Ways to Design a User-Friendly Website
It is a well-established fact that having a website is important. However, note that not all websites are user-friendly.
In fact, most sites lose their most valuable visitors in just a matter of seconds after visiting their web pages. That’s because a lot may find so many obstacles in finding the information they need. So, without wasting their time, a lot of visitors simply leave and move on to other web pages.
To become user-friendly, your site should have a unique aesthetics, quick loading time, and so on. By doing so, you can expect clients to come back and search for more updated information. Your site is capable of retaining users. Many of these visitors and readers will be loyal eventually.
In this post, we will walk you through the four creative ways on how to create a website:
1. Navigation
Making your website easy to navigate is a crucial factor that you have to take into consideration. Users love the fact that they know where to exactly find the information and products that they are looking for.
Visible search bar
The search bar is the little magnifying glass that can be found on top of your site. Although it is something some users hardly pay attention to, for some, it is the quickest way from landing on your site, making a purchase, or retrieving important information.
Therefore, it is crucial to boost your search box’s visibility. See to it that it is easy for users to find it.
Make it simple
Keep away from using technical terms, labels, and icons that no one recognizes. You must know how to speak the user’s language rather than using overcomplicated terms and factors that are rather unfamiliar with other people.
Refrain from using dropdown menus
Dropdown menus are popular, yes, but it is certainly not a great idea. Here are some reasons avoiding drop-down menus are good:
- Great for search engines: Dropdown menus can pose quite a challenge for search engines to crawl. It usually depends on how they are programmed, and these may lead to problems later on.
- Excellent for visitors: A usability study shows that drop-down menus are annoying. Why? Because a visitor’s eyes move much faster as it does with a mouse. Therefore, when they hover the mouse in a menu item, and they decided to click, then you are giving them more options. That alone is a hiccup for a web visitor.
Moreover, dropdowns compel users to skip the most vital pages of your site. You can see this problem in your analytics.
2. Accessibility
Accessibility means that your site is largely accessible even to persons with disabilities who are using the internet. Meaning, it is quite easy for people with disabilities to understand, navigate, perceive, and interact with your website.
Web accessibility could also benefit those people that have several other cases like aging, a slow internet connection, people who are using a VPN, a broken arm, and so on according to TheVPNCoupon.com.
Appearance
See to it that the site images that you use have alternative texts so that you communicate better with people that have a visual impairment.
Your other media such as your audio and videos should also have subtitles, transcripts, or captions to be more accessible to people who have hearing impairments.
Color is another thing that you have to take into consideration as well. See to it that there is a high contrast between the colors of your texts with the background.
Colors that have a low contrast make it quite difficult for other users to view your site especially those who have a visual impairment.
3. Consistency
Your web pages must follow a certain layout to come up with a theme, as well as to maintain uniformity. If the layout of your web pages is not uniform, then chances are, your site will look disorganized and untidy. So, try to eliminate clutter as much as you can.
A common mistake other people make is to place so much information on a single page that the users get easily overwhelmed. Again, you need consistency here so that you can organize your content and how it could be better laid out on your site.
4. Design
There are a lot of things that one must take into consideration when it comes to website design.
Others think that presenting a simple scheme is the best way to present your site, others think that having a dynamic one will help you gain more attention. Check out these trends in UX design.
Simple color scheme
Generally, adopting a simple color scheme is more ideal if you are promoting your best item, because it will serve as your focal point. Take Apple for instance, who have a more simplistic design so that a user’s eyes are only focused on a specific section of a site.
Dynamic design
Having a dynamic design is more ideal if you want to promote more than one item. You can utilize it if you want to show your best items all at once. For instance, a website that features several items and categories.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it. Those are the tips that make your site more user-friendly. Keep in mind though that the key to having an excellent UX is to make improvements consistently.
You must test everything first, and then try to see through the eyes of your target audience. In the long run, your site will be much easier to use, and could eventually lead to more clients and sales.