Design, Accessibility, Usability and User Interaction
Have you noticed how often when you open a website for the first time, how much time you need to decide whether or not you are going to continue with your journey on that website. Experts say it takes couple of seconds to the average user to decide whether or not he will read on, stay on the website and dig further more. If your design, color scheme and overall looks of the website cannot attract the attention or are too annoying the visitors will just click the X in the top right corner and carry on with your competitors website..
We are all aiming at better traffic volumes, better positioning in the search engines, better conversion rates. At least we should be if we are serious about our intentions and plans to develop the online side of our business or even turn our website in a full time business venture.
Apart from the design there is the accessibility and usability of our website. Those fancy terms are actually used for how easy it is for the average visitor to deal with our website, to find what he is looking for and finally make that purchase or whatever action you are calling for. The general understanding if you are selling a product or a service is that the users of your website should be able to reach it in 3 clicks. This means 3 clicks away from the homepage is ok, anything further deep down becomes difficult for the average person to cope with.
You should aim at making your website easy for navigation, with links to internal pages visible and well positioned, with easy ways of going back and forth without risking to be lost inside the website. Think of that – if your website is visited by someone that doesn’t use Internet that much, or a child, will he or she be able to find their way. If the answer is Yes then you are on the right track. If it seems to complicated then you have to find a way to simplify the whole navigation and design. Simple is better. There is a very useful marketing method called K.I.S.S. – Keep it Simple and Stupid. Stick to it. Do some tests, ask people to open your website and observe how they interact with it, ask them how they feel and based on the feedback that you receive work making your website better.
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