Is your website user friendly?

There are a number of factors when a customer decides to browse your website that makes it user friendly. When a user arrives on your website, what you want to avoid is the user then leaving the site. So, what can you do to keep your potential customers engaged for longer? Various factors will influence a user’s involvement and their willingness to view the content you have posted on the website. We focus below on the key elements that affect this.

Slow Loading

To have a user friendly website there is no time for waiting. If your website takes too long to load, you can be sure that the user will sooner or later leave your site. The recipient will not wait for the page to load and instead proceed to visit a competitor’s website. They can access the same information here as they would on yours but much faster.

What to do to speed up the page loading time?

• clean up – remove outdated or duplicate content and limit usage on the server.
• compress graphics – reduce the graphics files before uploading them to the website. Compression will reduce the file size, but will not affect its quality, so don’t be afraid of compressing graphics.
• ensure reliable hosting is in place – some of the hosting services available on the market give the opportunity to process information faster, so you should make sure a reliable hosting provider is in place.

Non-Intuative Navigation

Take care of convenience for users and give him the freedom to navigate your website. Information overload on the website will effectively discourage the recipient from continuing to navigate through the content. The intuitive menu bar, clear content layout, easy accessibility and convenience of navigating the information contained on the website (offer, contact details), all this means that the user will be happy to browse the content of your site, and what’s more, is more likely to return.

Poor Design

The outdated layout of a website is discouraging to users, on the contrary – it can effectively scare your potential customers away. How a website looks, affects the way your viewer perceives your brand as a whole. If you take care getting the right design in place for the site, which is in line with current web design trends, you will effectively increase the engagement of the user, while creating a positive image for your brand.

Incorrect Content Optimisation

Too much content can put off the recipient, and when given this information overload, will retreat to your competition. If you want to share your industry knowledge with recipients, do it in an attractive and non-overwhelming way. How? First of all, take care of content architecture. Using headings (h2, h3, h4 etc.) can come in handy in helping you organise your text, whilst maintaining SEO standards. Using bold and italics in moderation can also help with this.

If you care about retaining your website visitors with a modern and effective website, contact us today.