Characteristics of a User-Friendly Website

User friendly design is most important for every website; it plays a great role in improving the performance of website. User friendly website increases the needs of audience and increase user satisfaction. A successful business has a good website; it creates a great user experience for their visitors. User friendly websites have lots of features and functions that help you to make your system easier. There are so many methods to improve the usability of a website. These usability tips help you to make website more attractive for customers and it improves the chances of successful online business. This article provides some essential characteristics of a user-friendly website. Some user friendly elements include mobile compatibility, website loading time, effective navigation, accessible all users, usable forms and more.

Mobile compatibility: we know that people are increasingly using mobile phones and tablets to access the internet, so optimizing website for mobile is an essential thing. Firstly check existing website on mobile. “Google mobile site tester” it will let out this. Website doesn’t properly access on mobile devices; create a mobile version of website for free with the help of web-based mobile website builders. A mobile-friendly website can appeal mobile users and it makes everything responsive.

Fast loading time: slow loading speed is one of the important reasons for visitors to leave a website. Always make sure website loads within 4 to 6 seconds is important for good usability. It mainly affects search engine ranking. Some free tool such as Pingdom is used to test the speed of the website and to get suggestion on to improve website speed. Usage of some plugins and widgets includes some other common factors that affect website speed. Try to limit their use but some of them are necessary. Slow loading is one of the most important reasons for visitors leave a website. Customer expectations have changed significantly in recent years. Customers will wait only for a few seconds for a page to load, after that they will most likely navigate away to a competitor's website and will never visit again.

Effective navigation: it is one of the essential aspects, and it is a simple HTML or JavaScript menus properly working on some browsers and some important platforms. It is equally important for the navigation to be clutter-free. It is essential to make the number of menu items as far as possible. A drop-down menu work better on large site with many sections. An effective website will be easy to navigate and understand. It will make easy for users to find they’re looking to manage page titles in a short and organized methodically. Website navigation will help to make website more intuitive for the user. There is more to navigation than menu. Here are some other aspects to consider:

1. Good search feature.

2. Multiple ways to explore content e.g. top 10, most rates, most popular, etc.

3. Custom 404 Page.

4. Good Internal Linking

5. Informative header and footer

Readable content: It is important to note that content should be clear, concise, and well formatted. Utilize headings and subheadings to breakdown content, along with that short paragraph and bulleted lists are necessary.

Usable forms: Forms are very important elements of a business websites. They allow users to interact with the website. Forms are very useful to generate leads for business and it is important to ensure that these forms are easy to use and accessible to everyone. Here are some tips:

1. Use proper labels for all fields

2. Follow good form design principles

3. Making the number of fields to a minimum

4. Offer tool tips and suggestions

5. Display on-screen message on completion

6. Use correct validation

Color scheme: contrast between website background and content is one of the most important web design principles. This should never be overlooked. Good contrast must be there between background and text. It is essential to make content legible and easy to read. Lack of contrast, on the other hand, makes it very difficult for visitors to read content.

Valid mark up and clean code: Relevant web design is more dependable. It ensures a website to load faster and it appears to be consistent among browser and devices. It makes easier to locate problems. More information and mark-up validation tools can be found on W3C's website.

Browser Consistency: Browser compatibility can be easily leaved. Some most popular companies struggle from this problem. This is very bad for branding and has a negative effect on website usability. Modern browsers and inconsistencies exist in website that gets interrupted by different browsers. Every website appears consistently across all major browsers such as google chrome, internet explorer, firefox, safari and more.

Good error handling: Good error handling and description on screen messages are very much important. Correct handling of errors at a code level ensures that the website is robust and is free from bugs. Displaying the right error message improves the user experience.

Information: It is one of the most important features. Visitors usually enter your website many times and provide relevant information to their users. So, website can add relevant blogs about the product and services. It helps them to make decision quickly. Make sure that website provide relevant and high quality information, because there is no need to stuff relevant content that provide lots of information.

Visual resources: Make use of visual resources like images, video, and interesting designs that work to organize website and motivate engagement. Visuals will help you to break up website content.

Well-formatted content is easy to scan: Every content on a web page alternatively of reading each and every word from top to down, every users tend to scan through key parts of the page quickly. This is very important to their needs and it to format content with this in mind. Correct use of headings, sub-headings, paragraphs, bullets and more makes it easy for readers to scan.

Accessible all users: User friendly website should be accessible to everyone, which including people with physical disabilities. For instance the visually impaired users typically use screen-readers to access the Internet. The 508 website accessibility guideline highlights simple web design techniques. That can be applied to make sure website can be accessed easily on-screen readers. Website creates to larger audience.

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Resource: Yarddiant Web Lounge Pvt.Ltd, Office Number: 12, First Floor, Sahya Building, Government Cyber Park, Calicut, Kerala 673016, India