Six Tips on Making Your Website More User-Friendly

Recently, Rich Goidel, Interactive Consultant , provided us several tips on how to make websites user-friendly. Rich has several terrific suggestions on ways you can improve your user’s experience. His suggestions are as follows:

1. Understand Your Goals
To paraphrase John Kennedy (loosely and badly) ask not what your website can do, ask what your website can do for your company. What I mean is, start by defining real, concrete goals regarding your site’s relationship to your company’s marketing and sales plans. Don’t jump the gun by thinking about all the cool features and functions it can haveâ€”and that your customers might care less about. The only way to figure out what’s required is to begin with your company and site strategy.

2. Be Your Customer
If you build it, and they come, are your customers going to stay? Not if the site doesn’t address their needs. Simply put, they have tasks, goals and pains to address. Does your site meet these, or does it focus on banal things like the company mission statement? Addressingâ€”and fulfillingâ€”customer needs will prevent your site from becoming bloated with content that’s not just useless, but gets in the way of a good experience.

3. Invest in Design and Layout
It doesn’t have to be a work of art, but it does have to be well balanced and support your company’s brand. Good website design is no different than good print design: Pages should be engaging and easy on the eye, with interesting graphics that support clear messaging, font styles and sizes that are readable and a layout that helps us focus and digest the content. Spend some money on an experienced designer who understands usability and the value of white space; it’ll be well worth it.

4. Clarify Site Navigation
When you walk into a department store (think Target), your eye immediately pans across the aisles, assessing signs, merchandise and the layout to give you a sense of what’s immediately available to you, where it lives in the store and whether or not you like what you see â€” a map of the territory, so to speak. This is a real challenge in the online space, which lacks the physical dimensions of the real world.Â To compensate, make sure you’ve got very clear navigation that ensures users always know where they are, where they came from and where they can go next. Make sure menu items clearly define your intentÂ (“Our Staff” vs. “Inmates,” “Contact Us” vs. “‘Sup?” and so forth.). This goes beyond main site navigation and should be made manifest in sub-navigation, calls-to-action, links in body copy, etc.

5. Remember: Nobody will Read Anything (until they get where they’re going)
Technically, this isn’t always true, but it’s a good axiom to live by. People generally read very little online until they find the information they were looking for in the first place. Follow this rule and your copy will be nice and brief, making life easier for visitors. (But remember point #2; just because it’s short doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fulfilling!)

6. Focus on Conversion
What is it you want your customers to do? Call you? Submit a form? Forward information to others? Make sure you know these answers. Even better, make sure your site promotes the corresponding actions (in appropriate ways). With a laser-like focus on conversion, you’re bound to keep out the fluff, have an actionable web site and save your customers’ valuable time (and your valuable dollars).

About Today’s Guest Columnist:

Rich Goidel is a multi-dimensional interactive specialist with a focus on brand and user experience. He bridges the gaps between marketing strategy, digital design and technical development. Rich has held director positions at three, Moxie Interactive, Media Firma and DM3 Marketing. Successful roles have included Interactive, Technical and Creative Director, User Experience Designer, Information Architect, Producer, Programmer and even Voice Over Talent.