Your business website is more than just a declaration of who you are and what you do; it needs to be a whole experience for your visitors, and a positive one at that, in order to engage their interest and keep them coming back.
In order to succeed in doing this, your business site needs to be user-friendly, and there are many ways you can achieve that.
Make Sure That It Is Fast Enough
One main aspect that can make or break your business site (and your user’s experience) is speed. It does not matter if you have an amazing website with the best content and best products — if your site is not loading fast enough, it will be a problem. It may even be enough to deter a visitor straight away after clicking on your business website for the first time.
Site speed is crucial for a user-friendly experience. Not only does the homepage need to load smoothly, but everything on your site needs to load quickly enough, too. This includes media such as videos and photos if you are providing content that users want to watch or interact with.
A slow-loading website is a common reason for users clicking off a site online. Think about your own experience, and what you would do if you came across a site failing to load fast enough if you were actively looking for something. Would you seek another website instead? Speed is key!
Have a Layout Which Makes Sense
You do not want users to feel as though they are trying to crack a code by navigating your website. It should never be a struggle to work out where items are placed, or how to find certain pages. Your layout, whether you have only a few website items or an extensive website with products and services, should always make sense.
Think about clear signposting and tab names, and how you can arrange all items on every page to not only be logical, but aesthetically pleasing, too.
Have Your Site Work Normally on All Devices
If you cannot adapt your main business website to work in an equal fashion on a mobile device, consider also creating a mobile version. Having a mobile and desktop version of your site when needed can really help the user-friendly experience on different devices.
Whether you have a mobile site in addition to your main site or not, thinking about your site on all devices is key. You will need to try and test how your site looks and feels on different devices to make sure it works just as well. Common issues can be text cut off (on landscape screens compared to portrait, for example), drop-down tabs displaying incorrectly, or images and text failing to load.
As a high number of consumers will browse on devices other than a desktop computer, this is an important point to remember.
Think About Accessibility
The user-friendly experience means that your website visitor can browse your website easily, without issue, and in an enjoyable way. This means thinking about your site being accessible, too. If you have a disabled user or a visitor who has difficulty with their eyesight, they are not going to be able to comfortably use your website if it is not set up for accessibility.
Some of the ways you can make your business website more accessible include:
Describe your images with alt text. Provide text with key images so that users with a screen reader can understand what is on the screen if they are unable to see it.
Check your website for font enlargement. Make sure font size can be enlarged easily without compromising the layout or text of your website.
Make everything clear. Your typography, font choice, and color scheme can all have a visual effect in terms of how easy the website is to read. Making your website scheme and design easy to understand is a universal need, but it is also particularly important for those with vision problems who may struggle with certain colors.
Include an audio description on videos
Enable keyboard navigation if you have users who cannot use a mouse to navigate your site
Make Contact Easy
You want consumers to contact you, after all, and if they choose to, you want to make it as easy and inviting as possible for them. Having many different contact options on your website will make this considerably easier.
A huge plus for a user-friendly website will be instant contact options, too. If you can include a live-chat option within your contact page as well as general information such as email addresses and telephone numbers, then you are creating a more positive and interactive experience if consumers want to reach out to you.
Also, do not forget to include links on your main website and contact page for your social media profiles. This gives consumers the option of contacting you through social media, as well as browsing your social media pages and content, too.
Closing Point: Do Not Forget to Ask for Regular Feedback from Your Users
Even if you incorporate all these key user-friendly features into your website, there may still be something that could be done better. The only way to know that is by speaking regularly with your website users and learning what is working, and what is not, as you go along. Getting their opinion is extremely important, as it can be difficult to view your website from an objective viewpoint when you have spent a lot of time developing it and are close to your product.
You can encourage feedback by follow-up messages or emails if consumers place an order with your site, or through social media posts and surveys, as a few examples.
Alternatively, some consumers may reach out to you themselves to tell you about issues or suggestions they have in regard to your site. If you do receive feedback for anything which needs to be improved, do not hesitate to respond and implement it.
Use these key steps to ensure your business website always remains user-friendly.
