Do's and Dont's of Web Usability - Part 2

Here is Next part of Do's and Dont's of Web Usability

10. Always make sure that the website content is easy to scan and read

Normally, people have short attention time.
So by giving section titles in h2, h3 or h4 tags to split your articles, you allow the website visitor to quickly go through the articles and see if there is something they are looking to read.
While writing the article content you should also be aware of the size of each paragraph as users will get tired of scanning long paragraphs.
Short paragraphs i.e about 5-10 lines are much easier to read.

11. Do not overload a small space with lot of content

That is a very important point – adding lot of things into a small space and not allowing the visitors to focus on the important stuff is not good.
The important information should be easily visible.

12. Make sure that you have included breadcrumbs in your pages

Breadcrumbs are useful in giving website visitor control of where they are at and what they are going to do next.
If the visitor is on a sub page of your Services page, your breadcrumbs will look something like this [ Home -> Services -> Sub Page Title ].
Breadcrumbs tells the website visitor exactly on which page they are and how to go back to the various levels if they like to.

13. Try to utilize color and contrast to shift focus

If you using heading and sub-heading for different pages of your website, you can try various shades of color which will tend visitor to notice the important stuff first.
These changes in colors will indicate what the website visitor will see next, ultimately it will bring user into a space where you want them to be like a sign up page or contact us page.

14. Make sure you don't have any broken links and images on your website

It may happen that you may have visitors coming to your website page from any search engine and if there are broken links, then visitor normally assume that either You are one of the old website which are not getting updated anymore or You are not keeping your website up to date, so they are going to go some where else.
Now a days some of the CMS have there own plugins that works great for checking the broken links.

15. Always include the footer to website pages and use the power of it

When website visitor on your website and he scroll through everything and go to the bottom of the page only to find a single line of text telling you that there is a copyright on the site.

We should put footer up a bit and add some extra content into it like a popular articles.

Do's and Dont's of Web Usability

If you are developing a website you will always think about how to make your websites more usable, whether it is improving the HTML structure of pages which benefits the user’s process or whether it is thinking about how we can show the messages on site in a better way to user by using CSS..
But you normally never bring this thought process into your jQuery-based or any other JavaScript-based website.
How can the user experience and usability of our jQuery events can be enhanced ?

If you are designing websites for a living or running your business online, below are some useful tips you should definitely read and remember.

1. Always add a search form

A lot of visitors will visit your website and immediately look for a search box. If you don’t have any search box, then they leave.
Site visitor do not feel comfortable on a site where they don’t feel in control.
The ideal position for a search box is on the top - right corner of the page.

2. Use a grid for your website structure

Grid helps to structure your website and keep the eye flow going for the website visitor, which is key factor.
Once you are done with a clean main website structure you can incorporate everything into a design of your choice, but don’t forget the grid.

3. Make the navigation easy to find & readable

If you’re website navigation is supposed to take your visitor from point A to point B, why would you place the navigation part in a weird spot or use irrelevant images for the site links.
Try to keeping the navigation easy to read for the website visitor. The ideal position for navigation section is at the top of the site so the visitor can easily navigate through your site.

4. Do not make the “contact us” link in your navigation bar a mailto: link

Most of the website visitor will hover over a link and check what the bottom of our browser screen says before he click on it. Especially visitor do it for the "contact" link since some people think it’s good to link this directly to your email address, causing an email program to open up.
This is not a good User experience practice. Ideally you should create a contact us page, put your email address on it. Website visitor will feel nice and will actually email you more often.


5. Make use of User Experience Applications as much as possible for website tests

Keeping track of the various forms of data from your website is something you should definitely do.
Google Analytics is a perfect solution for checking where your visitors are coming from, what pages they’re going to and how long they’re on your site.
A User Experience applications like Crazy Egg is perfect for learning where your visitors are mostly clicking and which are the most visited pages.
You can take help of some sites like Feedback Army to test how users see and use your site.
By learning such types of statistics for your website you can make sure you’re utilizing space as well as making sure that you've got the important stuff where it needs to be.


6. Do not overload your website’s sidebar with lot of widgets

We understand that if you’re running a blog there are a million widgets you can use on it, but you don’t actually need to use them all.
Think of it like your home. If there’s clutter everywhere and if your home is not clean, nobody in your home might not want to stay in it.
So clean up and keep things organized. Stick to the things that matter most for the user experience on your website and try to improve them.

7. Make sure that your website pages displays well on various browsers

We all know that IE6 is dead and outdated, but do not forget that there is still a lot of users who use IE7, IE8, Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc.
Just because your website looks good on one or two browsers it doesn't mean the visitor using another browser will like that your site is not displaying properly.
Take out some time and check your code and make sure it all works across the various browsers.

8. Keep your website forms shorter

Your contact us form should not be long and neither should a registration form. We should keep things simple.
The chances that people will leave the page when they are faced with a long sign up form are more then a short one with just three simple questions [name, email, suggestion]).

9. Keep you website pages structure consistent 

You need to remember that people want familiarity when they are viewing your website pages.
If they feel like they are somewhere else when they load a new page up, they’re normally click the back button and this should not happen.
The feel of website should be consistent through out all the pages of website.

I will post remaining part in next post :-)