Good Website Design Needs Usability

There is no denying the importance of the internet in business operations. Good web presence is a huge requirement if you want your business to be productive. Poorly designed websites may leave your visitors confused and cause them to click away from your pages, thus, causing you to lose potential sales. It is for this reason that usability has fast become the most important aspect of web design. After all, no matter how aesthetically pleasing your pages are, they will be useless if people don't understand how they work. Web sites are not only supposed to be readable—they should also be easy to navigate and use. Here are some tips on usability that you could use when designing your website:

• Ecommerce websites that aim to sell products must be tested for usability because if consumers are having a hard time figuring out how to view, select, and purchase products; it would definitely result in lost sales. Make sure that your website identifies—clearly—each product including its details and contains clear instructions on how to order, pay for, and have their purchase delivered.

• Your website must also detail your business, especially when you offer a service instead of a product. It must clearly define what your company is all about, the services you offer, your fees, and how to contact and hire you. Easy navigation and readability—both of which are important aspects of usability, must be kept in mind while designing this kind of business website.

• Good website design should clearly define contact options and other important information about the business so consumers won't have trouble accessing your products and services. An intuitive design also makes it easy for consumers to send information and details about your company to other people looking for the same service as referrals.

Card Sorting - What is it and how can it Improve Your Website Usability?

Card sorting is one of the most efficient ways to measure a website's usability. It mainly helps evaluate and design a site's information architecture. During this process, participants are asked to organize topics into different categories that make the best sense to them. Categories may be pre-determined or labeled by them to help you determine the most appropriate tags/markers to use for the actual web design. Traditionally, actual cards and pieces of paper are used to conduct a card sort, but professional usability researchers and UX experts now use card sorting software tools to make the job easier. Seeking the help of professional usability experts will help you formulate the best card sorting strategy to use that will yield the best results for your site's information architecture and design.

Card sorting, like other usability experience research techniques ultimately help you understand what users expect from your site and how they understand your layout and your topics. It is most useful when you have already done your homework to find out about your target users and the kind of content that is relevant to them. Know how typical users sort information can help you label categories for proper navigation, build the structure of the website, and decide what the most important things to put on the homepage are.

Depending on the needs of your website, you may choose to do an open or closed card sort. In an open card sort, participants organize topics from the content within your website into groups and name each of the groups that they have created in a way that accurately describes the items or the topics in each category. A closed card sort, on the other hand, uses pre-defined categories. Researchers also use a combination of these two techniques, using an open card sort to identify content categories, and then a closed card sort to see how well the labels work.

What Is Web Design, Usability Testing?

Web design usability testing is an important technique used as an initiation step in the improvisation of a website. The usability testing service will be provided by the dedicated service providers available in the market. It is essential for any website to undergo usability testing periodically to avoid any serious consequences which may lead to reconstruction of the whole website.

Types of usability tests

Usability tests are very similar to commonly known analyzing techniques like website traffic tracking, record tracking, customer survey, etc., providing information to the website owners about the standard and performance of the website. A keynote about the usability test is that unusually like any other testing techniques, it will consider some most important ideas of websites like:

• User portfolio testing

• Customer response

• Partner network testing

• Lab-based website performance testing

• Customer usability and convenience and other aspects also

More commonly the usability tests will be in the form of interviews, dialogue-box based feedbacks, live chat or some simple online chats. Every website owner will get benefits from using usability software to improve their website’s standard and performance.

There are several service providers available, and it is best to select a talented team website usability testing. 

How Does A Site Intercept Survey Work?

The site intercept survey is an online survey that identifies the profile of all the visitors coming to your website, their clicks, and what they generally do when they visit the web page.

Working: This survey might look like a pop up, but it is actually not. It is an intercept piece that does not get blocked by blockers. Upon visiting the website, users are asked a series of questions about their profile, usage and intentions of visiting the website, and then they can visit the website like they normally do, upon exit they are again asked a few questions about their experience. It is feedback given by first hand customers and their experience and problems while visiting the website. This survey can be conducted at any stage and is capable of taking the pulse of your current site visitors which helps to understand what kind of usability testing is needed for the website.

The advantages are:

•    Keeps track of the current profile visitors
•    Identifies how they came to know about your site
•    Recognizes user behavior based on their intent
•    Detects how well the site meets user expectations.

Depending on the above analysis, it becomes easier to pinpoint mistakes and make necessary changes and increase traffic to the website.

Boosting Website Performance With Usability Testing For Websites

Usability tests are extremely helpful in identifying problems related to website design and functionality. Usability tests predominantly help to uncover navigation issues, highlight overall design effectiveness, determine content relevance, and assess customers’ ability to fulfill critical tasks. Apart from these, usability testing provides relevant feedback about overall customer experience with the website. A few of the questions that could be answered with the help of usability testing include:

a. Are any sections of the website confusing and difficult to navigate?

b. What are the steps taken by customers for completing a transaction?

c. What are the major blocks when looking for specific information?

d. How easily can the customers use your website?

Since these tests help to identify issues related to Web site design and performance, they can be taken up anytime in the website Lifecycle. However, it is wise to undertake them early on in the design process so that you can understand major flaws, and change them accordingly.

In general, feedback is divided into two main categories. They reveal quantitative usability metrics, such as the number of clicks and the amount of time taken to complete a given task. Other tasks can help you with more qualitative data, such as a visitor’s perceived ease-of-use for a particular Web page.

The result from usability tests should be used to improve your website functionality and design, and can provide useful information into how customers find and access information. Ease of access to information is a crucial aspect of customer service and improvements in this field will help in improving the overall customer experience.

Usability Expert Shares Guidelines For Website Usability

Website usability is one of the cheapest methods to improve the look of a website and thus strengthen any business. When the website is easy to use, the number of visitors increases and thus helps the website to achieve its goal. Experts share a checklist to check and improve website usability as a site’s success is determined by how it guides the users.

• The website should load within 3 seconds: It is increasingly frustrating for the users if the website takes more than 3 seconds to load. Experts give 2 ways to increase the speed of website namely faster servers and optimized websites that load faster. 
• Images on sites aren’t always compressed; experts suggest compressing images. This means less loading time.
• Do not use extraneous features and add-ons. Users often visit a website for a specific purpose, and if the features are confusing, it might increase the loading time.
• The users are most likely to know the purpose of the website in the first 5 seconds. If users do not figure out what to do, they will most likely leave. So the primary action on a website should be as clear as possible.
• The website logo should be visible and should lead to the home page. Upper left corner is where the logo should be placed.
• The about us, contact us and Home links should be visible and easy to find. The above guidelines improve the understanding of web usability and thus improve and benefit a website.

What Is Eye tracking Web Usability?

Eye tracking is a process of measuring the point of gaze, or the motion of the eye. Since its inception, this method has been used by scientists to study neurology and by marketers to study the effectiveness of package designs.  Now web designers use eye tracking to study the effectiveness of web pages as this method is effective in understanding and assessing the usability and reach of a web page.

Usability practitioners are now using eye tracking as a tool to understand how people “see” websites and make important and informed decisions. Well planned usability testing and well executed eye tracking studies can provide information about user impressions that the researcher generally cannot observe. An individual collects information about the world around them through various ways, vision, however, is the most important. The most powerful light receptors are in the central region of the eye known as the Fovea. Eye tracking provides an account of where the participants are looking at the screen as they complete a task. If used properly, it can provide important and unique data that can be then evaluated in interesting ways and mined for innovation and ideas.

If used correctly, this method is capable of rendering results that help companies change the way their websites look, and thus expect increases in the number of visitors.