What is Website Usability?

Importance of Usability & Web Design

Website usability identifies factors that impact the ability of visitors on a website to interact and navigate with a given web design. With an objective to optimize usability, many companies present information and choices in a clear and concise way which minimizes ambiguity and places important items and calls to action in the most noticeable sections of a webpage. A clear, user-friendly website that is intuitive to use, simple to navigate, and fully responsive will produce more satisfied website visitors and lead to increased conversions.

Often web site accessibility is associated with usability factors to provide a more user-centered website experience. Website accessibility refers to the ability of a web site to function across multiple technology platforms, browsers and devices. Several methodologies and initiatives have been created to help make content more accessible, including the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), which aims to make websites accessible to people with disabilities, and more recently AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), who's goal is to increase the users mobile experience by loading webpages instantly.

Web design experts at Tweaked SEO can leverage the right combination of usability and accessibility to make a difference to your bottom line. After all, if a user can't interact properly with a website, they may leave, potentially resulting in a lost sale. The combination of several years of experience with advanced tools and utilities to review and analyze website behavior leads to new insights and usability enhancements that will skyrocket conversions and satisfy customers.

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Effective Web Design & SEO

The success or failure of any website can often be predetermined by its ease of use and simplicity. It is crucial that throughout the web development process, programmers and graphic designers maintain close communication to identify elements that increase the usability of a web interface. Failing to do so can result in what may appear to be an aesthetically pleasing website design, but ultimately be a flop on functionality. For instance a website with a video background may take several seconds to load, or an introductory carousel that switches to fast, or a layout that fails to render on mobile devices. These types of issues may seem minor, however they can dramatically decrease the effectiveness of a company's website.

It is important to clearly understand a websites target audience and create content and design that effectively speaks to this crowd. Not every customer is alike, and creating language, visual cues and navigation that a target demographic can relate to will increase the chances of a positive experience. A clear website purpose is crucial as a first step in design to outline the goals and lay groundwork for an optimized website.

Reducing a user's cognitive load and search time for answers to their questions also weighs heavily on website success. People typically scan page content for fixed points and stop at bolded or distinctive text that makes emphasis of important information. Web pages that have content that has been well crafted and communicates effectively with user's will naturally result in better SEO quality metrics and ultimately draw in more website traffic.

Website Usability Checklist

There are many factors that can impact website usability and enhance the users experience while browsing a website. A few of these factors are;

Availability: Identifies key factors that influence accessibility of content through responsive design, broken links, page speed & uptime.
Simplicity: Of design helps facilitate clear communication of content by implementing consistent & familiar design elements where users expect them.
Learnability: Uses elements of familiarity and recognition to make website interfaces easy to use & simple to learn.
Trustability: An important factor of any local business or national brand is to provide an environment of trust & credibility by incorporating accurate & useful content.
Relevancy: Using clear and concise information blended with customer personas to craft content that directly talks to & resonates with a target demographic.

All of these elements play a strong role in the user experience of a website. Creating website designs and content with these points in mind improve on website performance measures that search engines pay attention to, such as bounce rates and dwell time. The more user friendly a website is, and the greater a user's experience, the more likely it will rank higher in organic search engine results.

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Improving Usability Metrics

Usability Testing Methods

Understanding exactly how users interact with a website highlights weak points in design and functionality while providing insight to optimizations that result in increased usability. It's imperative with any website to test functionality with a representative user base and observe and measure interaction while desired tasks are performed. Doing so can flesh out optimizations that increase user satisfaction and ultimately lead to happier customers.

A/B testing is a common usability testing method that essentially creates two or more versions of a given webpage with the intention of measuring and recording the user interactions of each. Resulting data often leads to valuable insights about the effectiveness of varied webpage layouts and content, as well as click thru rates of call to action text and colouring. Optimizing on these elements almost always results in increased conversions.

Heat maps are another popular method to track and analyze user interaction and behavior on a webpage by users. Software integrated into the website that allows recording of visitor sessions sheds light on where and how people are using your webpage content. Areas of a page with high clicks, or paused mouse movement are highlighted to show potential usability issues that might exist or can be improved upon.

There are several tools available that test website speed, performance and responsiveness. Testing a website across multiple devices and screen resolutions is a necessity to ensure all users are having a positive experience, and content is being displayed as intended. Further optimizations to website coding, image compression and minification of included webpage resources can result in improved load times and a smooth user experience.

On larger more complex sites with multiple pages and informational content, feedback and survey forms are an effective way to obtain details on the performance of a website from its user base.

Whether you are looking to increase the user experience across your site, boost conversion levels, or get more organic SEO traffic, Tweaked SEO can sift through the data and achieve your business goals.

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