Why Your Website Design Needs to Create a Good User Experience
July 24th, 2010
People rely, for the most part, on three predominant things when browsing or searching through a website: usability, readability and appearance. Without these, a website would essentially be bland, unreadable and difficult to navigate. To create a good user experience, that is to say creating a unique web environment to make the user more interested in the message you are trying to sell, first-class design aspects need to be adhered to. Once you have attracted the interest of the reader, your message should be able to carry itself. This is relatively easy to accomplish, should the website be designed in the best possible way.
When it comes to usability, there is absolutely nothing worse than a website that is difficult to navigate. Creating a strong site map will assist where this is concerned. If it is text-based, it is easier for the user to navigate his/her way around the site. Ideally, however, the menu or tabs should serve as this function, allowing the user to be able to see clearly where he/she wishes to go. Having an onsite search engine also assists in this regard, as it allows for people who are in a rush or perhaps impatient to find the desired information faster. Say, for instance, you have a tourism website and the user is looking for accommodation and rates at a certain lodge or hotel, with a search tool, it will be much easier to find. Alternatively, if they have an area in mind but not lodgings, having a decent menu or navigation tool will help them better locate the information they require. Lacking in this will create a negative user experience, and your page impressions will suffer as a result.
Where readability is concerned, the user needs to be able to very clearly see the information they have now accessed by the user-friendly website. If the font is too small, or there is simply too much information on the page, people will very quickly lose interest in what they are reading. When it comes to the World Wide Web, less is always more. Wordiness is not popular with a tool that prides itself in quick and efficient information collection. Be short, to the point but interesting and conversational to ensure readability.
Appearance is perhaps the most important aspect to create a positive user experience with a website. Despite popular opinion, people do judge books by their covers. A website needs to be chic, well designed, colourful and crisp. It also needs to be consistent, don’t have one plain black page and the next, all the colours of a rainbow. Consistency is a way to make users comfortable. The ‘less is more’ approach is also strong here. People can get uncomfortable when stared with neon colours, especially those with light sensitive eyes. Similarly, epileptic people do not want things flashing at them. Be sensitive to demanding users, because they mostly are.
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