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How does your website rate in terms of usability? Is your navigation easy to understand? Is the information well organized? Does your site design convey a professional approach?
Get a FREE site analysis.
We will rate your site on a range of usability factors and prepare a report with suggestions on how you can increase the usability and effectiveness of your website.
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Welcome to Alaska Web News!
This newsletter is intended to provide information, tips and advice to Alaska business owners on how to more effectively use the web to increase business. If you would like to be removed from the mailing list click the unsubscribe link at the bottom.
Website Usability
If you frequently get emails requesting information that is available on your website then visitors are not finding it. This could indicate a problem in your site structure, navigation or other areas that effect the usability of your site.
Usability is an umbrella concept that refers to how easy it is for visitors to use your site and find the information they want. This involves many aspects of a site including information architecture, navigation, page layout and graphic design.
Information Architecture
The first step towards a site that is easy to use is organizing the information in your site into a logical, easy to understand structure. The larger and more complex your site the more important it is to design a good site structure. Start by creating a hierarchical tree like a flowchart.
For smaller and medium sized websites try to create a structure that is no more than three layers deep below the home page. That means that from the home page you are never more than three clicks from any information on the site.
Keep the structure as simple as possible. For example let’s say you operate a lodge out of which you run guided hunting and fishing trips. Here is one option for a site structure.
While this works it can be improved. When visitors looks at the top level menu they see "Guided Trips" but must click on it to find out what sort of trips are included. Here is a better choice:
We’ve accomplished a couple things with this small change to the site structure. If visitors come to your site looking for hunting trips they see what they want right away they don’t have to go looking for it. Secondly we have eliminated a layer so with a single click the visitor is seeing useful and relevant information.
Visitors to your site will become frustrated if they are forced to drill down through layers and layers of submenus to get to the information they want.
Navigation - Consistency
Making it easy for visitors to get around your site is critical. Three important elements of good navigational systems are consistency, visibility and persistence.
Imagine getting into a rental car and finding that the brake and gas pedals were arranged differently than other cars. It would be a frustrating experience to say the least. Meet the visitor’s expectations, don’t confound them.
Now that the web has been around for a while, certain conventions have emerged. You should follow those conventions whenever possible when laying out your navigation system. One such convention is the use of an horizontal menu at the top of the page that contains headings for the top level information categories. When sub-categories are needed a sub-menu on the left side near the top of the page has been come the most common approach. Follow these conventions unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise.
Your navigation should also be internally consistent. Don't change the placement, style or appearance of your navigation and menu system once it has been established on the home page.
Navigation - Visibility
Visibility means that the user's menu options are fully visible and don't require the user to roll the cursor over a menu header to see what the options are. Some website use a horizontal menu bar with sub-categories that are revealed when the user mouses over the menu option. The problem is that users must rollover the menu item when they want to see the sublevel options. The options are not visible.
Navigation - Persistence
The navigational options should persist and not disappear when the visitor clicks on one of the menu options. For example, let's say you have a hunting trips overview page that contains a submenu of the individual trips that you offer. Clicking on one of the menu titles takes you to a page with all the details of that trip. The submenu on the side should persist – it should be present on all of the detail pages so the user can select a different trip without having to go back to the trips home page first.
The site structure and navigational system are things that visitors to your site should not even notice. If your information has been well organized and your navigational system has good consistency, visibility and persistence then you will be well on your way to a site with a high degree of usability. Visitors to your site will have no trouble finding the information they seek.
Next time I’ll cover more aspects of good site design and how graphic design, page layout and other features can increase site usability.
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