Responsive website first
In times when phones are more often in use than desktops, it is crucial for you to design a responsive website. This kind of design uses HTML and CSS in a way that makes your page look good on all types of devices – not only desktops, but also mobiles and tablets. How does it work in practice? The responsive website sends to the browser the command to scale the page in line with the screen size that is in use at the particular moment. Thanks to this, your website becomes more user-friendly, as it can be explored by users on all devices and from wherever they want.
Information architecture for a user-friendly website
The essence of web usability is to make it as easy as possible for users to find the information they need. To hit this target, remember to:
name the elements of menus or categories accurately (if you run an e-commerce, it will shorten the customer journey and boost your shop conversion rate),
place fixed elements of your website in places where users expect them most (if your customers want to contact you, they will go to the footer to search for contact details),
design an easy-going customer journey so that your users’ experience is seamless (for example, display to your users a progress bar and ask only for absolutely necessary data for order forms),
make your users feel secure (add testimonials to your website, offer a great variety of payment methods, create reliable product descriptions etc.),
take a good care of the looks of your site (avoid using shocking colors or serif fonts that can be hard to read, pay special attention to content to be well-formatted).
In the whole process of creating the page remember that user-friendly website should be, above all, intuitive. It means designing a page on which users act without any effort, and as a result, their journeys are as fast and smooth as possible.
How to format content?
The page with unreadable walls of text will be abandoned by its users very fast. How to compose texts that will draw users attention and will deepen their visits?
Remember to use family fonts that will display well on all devices (secure examples are Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Georgia etc.).
Don’t compose articles longer than 5 lines.
Bold the most important fragments of texts.
Use headlines of different priorities (h1, h2, h3 etc.).
Use graphics elements to vary the looks of your content (charts, tables, alerts, quotations, listings etc.).
Personalize your communication (remember that if you write for everyone, you actually write to no one).
What else to remember?
Making your website more user-friendly, you can not forget about its load time optimization, as users will not wait too long for your site to display. Check if there is no surplus of code on your page – too expanded code makes your page heavier. If you use WordPress for your website, you can prevent from it by installing WP Super Cache plugin. It changes the dynamic version of code into the static one which is lighter and loads faster.
