Tips to improve the usability of Website

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We all make mistakes running our websites, no matter website is small or large one. Many small web design mistakes can affect usability of the website. If users don’t want to come again or stay more time on your website then its total waste of money as well as time which you invested in your website.
So here we are going to discuss some common mistakes that you have to avoid and some common practices which you have to implement in your website. Of course, you do not necessarily have to follow all tips discussed here; rather get from them a general idea of what your competitors are doing with their websites.

• Website color:

Every web designer must know basic concepts of color theory because it will help you at the time of web design. Mostly professional looking websites use light colors for backgrounds and the dark colors like black for text. It’s always good to use light colors as background because on dark background we require big and colorful text which is not so user-friendly if your website is sharing content in the form of text.

It’s not compulsory to always use light backgrounds because it depends on your website subject so just make sure your website colors are suitable with your subject.

• Typography:

Typography is also a main part which can affect the behavior of web user. Make sure that your typography is suitable to your content. Use proper and common fonts. Apply proper spacing between two alphabets and lines. Font size is also so important, many websites use 11 to 14 font size for their content.

Divide content in paragraphs, use H tags to make content more user-friendly. Using H tags also helps you to make your content more Search Engine friendly.

• Navigation:

Navigation helps to share more content of your website with web user, so always try to make navigation simple and user-friendly with proper anchor texts. In common practices nearly 80 % of websites use large horizontal navigation.

Don’t use icons or images as navigation links because every user can’t understand the meaning of each icon, so use text instead of images in navigation or combination of both.

If your site is full of many articles and content then provide search option, it will help user to find what he or she want from your website.

You can make one page for representing your best articles and contents, like ‘Must Read’, ‘Our best Articles’ etc.

• Avoid Excess use of Flash:

We know flash is so good to represent reach interactive designs, but flash can make your website slow, you can use Advanced JavaScript techniques to alter some flash content. We can make slideshows, transactions etc with Advanced JavaScript techniques.

JavaScript are so lightweight and quicker so it’s good to use JavaScript instead of flash.

I am not saying to stop using flash but replace some of the flash effects with JavaScript.

• Website Speed:

Make sure that your website loads fast if you don’t want to lose visitors. Visitors like to hit Back Button or Close button instead of waiting for some more seconds, so make sure that your website will load in few seconds.

Don’t use many images on webpage because it will increase the loading time; try to avoid the excess use of images. If your website deal with more visuals then use proper formats of images like .JPG instead of .PNG which are smaller in size.

Consider the purpose of any decorative element, if it is useful then keep it. Otherwise, remove it.

Now day’s Google also considering the lead-time of the WebPages for ranking in the search results so you have to take care of your website load time.

• Check all links:

As our blog is related to design and showcase, we always showcase many things like logos, business cards, beautiful websites, fonts etc. So there are many possibilities that we can link to wrong source or page. Avoid these things; check all links on the pages and articles before it goes online.

It’s always to find broken links because internet always face death of many websites each date so if you are using WordPress like CMS for your website or blog then use plugins like Broken Link Checker which will scan all pages and show the list of broken links.

These are some of the common mistakes and practices which you have to keep in mind at the time of designing any website. I hope you understand my own views about web-design and its usability.

Article by Suraj vibhute

Suraj+ is a passionate blogger, Web designer, SEO and founder of MachoArts.com Loves to share design and blogging related stuff.