Website Design with Customer Usability in Mind
Picture this. After a long, hard day at work, you decide to stop by the supermarket real quick for a loaf of bread to go with that night’s supper. The parking lot is very crowded, and it takes nearly a half hour to find an empty space. You finally make your way in to have your pick of one of the many rickety, old shopping carts, which seem to catch and veer to the right, fighting you every inch of the way. You wander up and down the same aisles over and over again, searching, starting to feel like maybe that that loaf of bread really isn’t worth all the trouble. And if that isn’t enough to make you want to give up, standing in line surely is. You have already been there for nearly an hour, and there are still seven people ahead of you. It seems the cashier is pushing the wrong buttons every chance she gets. After another ten minutes of looking at your watch, you walk out empty handed and defeated. You go to the supermarket across town instead, and amazingly, you are in and out in a mere five minutes, positive that you will never be visiting that other store again.
What does this have to do with website design? It is an example of how if a website isn’t designed with swift and easy customer usability in mind, then people will turn away in favour of the competition. We saw how the crowded parking lot, faulty shopping cart, confusing product placement, and long lines all added up to create a miserable and fruitless shopping experience, but what are the aspects that make a website design pleasant and easy to use?
Easy to Find Your Way Around
When people are on a mission for that perfect product or service online, they are generally impatient. This is especially true if they have already been to a hundred other sites and haven’t found what they are looking for. This is why it is very important that your site is well organised and not overcrowded so that they can see everything that you have to offer with just a quick scan of the page. Everything from colour scheme to font size can have an effect on the usability of a page, and getting it just right can really take some expertise. This is why for the most guaranteed results it is best to turn to one of the professional and experienced companies that specialise in website design Poole.
Easy to Pay
Once they have found that you are, indeed, offering exactly what it is that they are looking for, they will be excited and ready to pay. But wait, what’s this? The payment forms are all confusing, and the shipping costs haven’t been explained! Don’t let these types of last-minute issues happen to your potential customers, or they shall surely turn away.
This has been a very basic overview of a couple of the aspects of website usability, written to help you get an idea of how important it really is to the success of your business. The real process of creating a highly usable website is very involved and is best left to one of the companies specialising in the website design Poole is known for.
Cynthia Williams is a freelance blog writer with a special interest in all things IT and web design related. She has based her information on past projects and personal experience with website design Poole and in many other areas.