Good Usability Web Design
Good usability web design is not difficult to achieve. Much of it is really nothing more than common sense. However, all too often we come across sites that have not so much been designed as put together. You may think that all sites are put together, and they are, but good usability web design is the art of putting a site together in such a way that there is no confusion, no surprises and no irritation when something happens that should not have happened. In short, it’s well thought out design and navigation fused in one – good usability web design.
If you are seeking to have a web site designed by a professional, but you don’t really know much about it, and therefore won’t really know if the outcome is good or not so good, this article can guide you by pointing out a few common mistakes that should always be avoided. Some otherwise good web designers can sometimes make mistakes they never seem to learn from. Here then are a few of the more common mistakes that prevent good usability web design.
- Have you ever been confronted by an eager car salesman? That’s how your main home page should read. In fact, all your pages should read like that. They should be imbued with enthusiasm, bubbling over with bold benefits, and they should be honest and not over hyped either. Pages that are lacklustre and plain boring persuade visitors to reach for the back button – fast. Good usability web design demands riveting, interesting and exciting words on every page that motivate, captivate and inspire.
- Are your web pages all about you and your company? Do you tell the visitor all about the features of your company and how it operates? Do you say things like, “We’ve been serving the community faithfully for 25 years”? You should not be doing that. That is not good usability web design. It is a simple ego trip. Start telling your visitors what you can do for them by listing the benefits of doing business with you. If your new blue widget runs faster than the last model, tell them you can save their time, which means saving their money too, when they get the new blue widget. That’s a benefit!
- Never have surprise links. One of the most common surprise links that seriously irritate visitors is the innocent looking link that opens a PDF document without warning. It takes time for the PDF reader to load and open the document. More often than not everything freezes while the loading takes place, and believe me, your visitor is fuming by the time the page settles back down to normal. If a link does something unusual, say so! That’s simply good usability web design.
