Need a more user-friendly website?
User-friendliness is critical for increasing conversions. The more user-friendly your site is, the more people will want to use it. (Makes sense, right?)
It’s not enough to have a site that just promotes products or services on it. In the competitive world of online marketing, your site needs to appeal to users. It should give them the best online experience possible. That way, they’ll stay for a while and come back for more.
So, how do you get a user-friendly website? It starts with code. The right coding will make your site easy to use, and therefore more attractive to web users.
Let’s take a look at what kind of code you need to create a friendlier site.
Speed Matters
One of the most important things for your site is how fast it loads.
No matter how cool or interesting your site seems, users won’t stick around for long waiting for things to load.
Code is critical for making your site faster. It can also make your site easier to use. Check out our steps for using code to make a faster, easier, and better site – more on that here.
How to Use Code for a User-Friendly Website
1. Use Compression
You can compress your codes to help your site load faster.
Zipping software will let you zip your code files together. The less compressed your codes are the more HTTP responses to the server. This causes your site to run slower because the server is experiencing more traffic.
Instead, zip your files together for fewer HTTP responses and a better loading speed.
2. Streamline Your Site
Look at a popular modern website, and you’ll see that clean, minimalist layouts are all the rage.
People love attractive yet simple images. They also love minimal text, with plenty of white space (or millennial-pink space, as the case may be.) Make your site uncluttered and easy on the eyes. This will not only appeal to today’s online customers but will also help your site load faster.
Organize your site with bullet points, or headlines to break up information. Try a clean, minimalist sans-serif font to really make it look modern.
Don’t use too many fonts, colors, and images. Busy sites are hard to read, confusing, and look outdated. People are already inundated with information in the modern world. Your site should feel like a relief to look at.
Provide information in short sentences and paragraphs. Your web users shouldn’t feel like they have to read a whole article to find out how to buy your product.
It’s also on-trend to keep the major information on your site on one page. Don’t make users click around trying to find what they’re looking for. Instead, use Javascript to put your information on a single page.
This will not only streamline the user experience but will also further minimize your site’s loading time.
3. Optimize for Mobile
More people are viewing the web from mobile devices than ever.
You need to have a site that is optimized for mobile so that it’s also optimized for user experience. It’s not likely that the majority of your users are viewing your site from a desktop computer. Do you know what your site will look like on a phone or tablet?
Having a user-friendly website means it is user-friendly on all platforms. Users shouldn’t have to pinch or zoom your site to make it fit on their phone screen. Instead, it should automatically load at the right size.
If users have to work too hard to see your site on their device of choice, they won’t spend much time on it.
4. Make Navigation Simple
Having a single main webpage with simple navigation can make your site much more pleasant to use.
Think about what makes it easy for users to get around on a site. Maybe it makes sense to let them scroll down to see all the necessary information. Maybe your site needs to have more sections, so a drop-down navigation menu makes sense.
Your site should be clear and easy to navigate on any device. Make sure users won’t have to struggle to find the information they need. Coding can help make your site a breeze to use.
5. Be Accessible to Everyone
Users with disabilities should find your site easy to use, too.
Keep in mind that some of your viewers will have vision impairments or colorblindness. Will they be able to use your site?
Choose colors that will register even with those who are colorblind. Provide clear alt tags for the visually impaired who are using your site.
6. Use eCommerce Filtering
If you sell clothing or physical products on your site, you’ll want to make sure that you have added filtering options to the site.
This allows users to change features of a product from the page they’re on, instead of having to search again to find another color or size. Keep bounce rates low by avoiding frustrated customers who are struggling to find the right item.
7. Get Suggestions From Users
The best way to know that you have a user-friendly website is to let your users tell you.
Give regular site visitors access to a poll where they can tell you what they like on the site and what they’d like to see changed.
Take their suggestions into account and make the changes they want to see, and you will have more loyal visitors. Maybe they’ll decide that a live chat feature would really help them troubleshoot using your product. Or maybe they want to see the site organized in a different way.
Conclusion
A user-friendly website can make all the difference in how successful your business is.
You can offer the same product or service as countless other sites. However, if your site is the easiest to use, you’ll likely make the most sales.
What are you doing to make a more user-friendly website? Leave us a reply and let us know how you’re using code to make your site more effective!
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