Congratulations, your brand new website has just gone live. Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for the money to roll in, right? Wrong!
In this day and age, your customers have certain expectations about what a user-friendly website should be: what it should look like, what it should do, how it should feel. And if yours doesn’t match up to these expectations, then you could be in for a very difficult time indeed.
You see, what really makes a website successful is how easy it is to understand, explore and navigate. Failure to tick all of these boxes is a sure-fire way to increase your bounce rate and will ultimately contribute to a futile foray into the world of web design.
In need of some support? Find our best user-friendly website tips below.
Speed Things Up
We’ve come a long way since dial-up internet, and slow-loading sites should be consigned to the dustbin of history. At least that’s what your visitors will think. And they vote with their feet too. After all, 49% of consumers expect a web page to load in no more than 2 seconds.
Ensure this doesn’t happen by following coding best practices, optimising your imagery and checking the speed and quality of your server. You can find more information on how to speed up your web pages by clicking here.
Choose Your Words Carefully
A picture may tell a thousand words, but your visuals shouldn’t be left to do all of the talking. The language you use – and where you position it – will help visitors to your website make sense of who you are and what you offer. Be sure to mention your business’s key selling points on your home page and present these in a way that is easy to comprehend.
Remember, people don’t want to have to wade through reams of copy when visiting your site. Keep things concise and to the point. Sell your brand as simply as you can whilst covering all of the most important information. Discover more tips on this topic here.
Nail The Navigation
As web users, site navigation is hard-wired into us. So don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Help your potential customers work their way through your site by implementing an easy-to-spot navigation bar and including links to the pages you want them to see. The pages you feature here could include things such as About, Product and Contact pages. It doesn’t need to get much more complicated than that.
For added functionality, incorporate a search bar that people can use to help them get to where they need to be with less hassle. Call-to-action buttons are also essential in making your customer’s journey to purchase or subscription as seamless as possible. They will also up your conversion rates.
Be Responsive
Mobile devices account for 54.8% of all web traffic. This means that you need to make sure that you have a user-friendly website, with a layout that is responsive to this sort of visitor and flows as freely as it would on a desktop. If you don’t do this, people will become frustrated by links that are hard to click on and boxes that are difficult to fill out. Hardly ideal if your target audience prefers to access the web via their smartphone.
Sites stacked with imagery, audio-visual stimuli and unnecessary clutter (lots of pop-ups and ads) will also often experience slow loading times. As mentioned above, this can be tremendously off-putting and could result in you losing out on potential customs.
Read our recent blog on how and why to optimise your website for mobile here.
Make It Shine
Once you’ve taken care of the practical side of things, there’s nothing left to do but to make your site look the part. This can be achieved by selecting colours that are in keeping with your brand and choosing a font style that complements them. When deciding on imagery, it’s best to use original photos of your products or staff team and, when using people, try and make sure they have eye contact with the viewer.
Negative space will also work in your favour when putting your site together, so don’t feel that you have to fill your pages with text and imagery. Less can certainly be more when it comes to web design, and your visitors will respond better to a site that is more relaxed than busy.
Call Today
At Truly Content, we make it our business to get to grips with the ins and out of every element of digital marketing. Web Development is a particular speciality of ours and we have helped many established clients make changes to their existing websites or get completely new ones off the ground. To take advantage of our expertise in user-friendly website strategies, give us a call on 01926 814 547, visit our website or email us at info@trulycontent.com today.