Usability 101
The premise behind web usability is simple: your web visitor’s
goals are your goals. Making your site as user-friendly as possible can be
complex, though. Read on for tips to make your site as usable as possible.
What Users Do
It can be easy to forget, but web visitors come to a site to
do something. Users have goals in
mind, and behave in certain ways. Users are always scanning – imagine scanning
a billboard while driving 75 mph.
Here are key things to remember about the people who are
coming to your site.
- Glance, Scan, and Click. Users look quickly for
things that they can do.
- Users love mindless choices.
- Users scan for sensible choices – anything
that’s close to what they’re looking for. They’ll click, scan, go back, click
again.
- Users are learning, and are looking for
consistent patterns to help them learn.
What Can You Do?
Within university sites, consistency is especially
important. Users will be visiting multiple sites within our web presence. So,
to give your site a fighting chance of satisfying web visitors, keep the following in
mind.
- Use accepted design conventions. This helps
users to feel at home
- Establish a clear visual hierarchy. Remember,
users are scanners. Plan for this fact.
- Use consistent navigation. Consistency helps
build trust.
- Provide clear and consistent actionable elements
– help users do something.
3 Usability Rules to Live By
- Obsess about the web visitors. Their goals are your
goals.
- Usability is about the web visitors. Test, test, test.
Make sure your goals are the web visitor’s goals.
- Create actionable choices that are “no-brainers”
for web visitors.