You can easily check to see if a web design is up to par by using our check list.
Some things to check are....
Changing Link Style
Do the links change colour or style when you hover over them with your mouse? They should do and they should ideally have a different colour or style once the links are visited. It's important that a site visitor gets feedback about their experience with your site. They need to be able to tell if they've already tried a link or not. This helps create a better user experience and helps your customer more easily navigate your website.
Flash Banner Advertisements & Pop Ups
These infuriate most users, are an unnecessary distraction, can be slow to view with slower internet connections and offer very little value to your prospective customer. We build rotating banners for client's but we don't recommend them. There's still a part of our brains that reacts to movement by warning us that danger is near. When we use websites that having moving images we have to battle with that part of our brain, constantly having to check the movement and remind ourselves that it isn't really a tiger about to eat us. This is exhausting and can make us feel anxious or angry. Bottom line is: don't give people a reason to feel bad when they're using your website and they'll use it more often and for longer.
Consistency
Is the site design consistent throughout in it's look and feel? Your customer may get lost or confused if they're unsure what's going on or where things are.
Answering Questions
Does the site answer a visitors' questions or does the user have to work for the information? The information a prospect would want should easily accessible on the website. Tell them it was Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick first thing on the page, and then go into the detail about how you worked it out. People don't want to read much online, they want to scan first to get closer to the information they're looking for, so help them do that. If you make it easy for them, they're more likely to find what they want and buy from you instead of someone else.
Navigation Tabs
In web best practice, so the user can easily locate what they are looking for, there should be no more than seven to nine main navigation tabs. This is because our short term memory can only hold 7 items, give or take 2 (1956 'The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two' by George Miller) before we need to start 'chunking' the items into groups. We don't want people to have to 'learn' our menu before they can make a decision where to go, so keep the menu options to roughly seven items.
Code
The website's HTML (language it's written in) should be clean so that search engines like Google and Yahoo can easily read it and therefore find your site. If your site is written by someone who isn't up to date with the latest rules around the code, or who's job isn't usually to write code, you may find that not only do search engines ignore your site, but the site itself may look very different to someone reading it on Internet Explorer than it does to someone reading it on Mozilla Firefox or Safari or any other web browser. Well coded sites will correctly represent your brand / product / service AND be of interest to search engines.
Word Copy
Your website text (web copy) should be easy to scan, easy to read, and there should be short paragraphs, bullet points and bold text to improve legibility. As previously mentioned, people don't want to read every word you write, they want to fish for the bits that are meaningful to their task. Around 75% of the language we use is redundant: we don't need it to get our point across. It's there to add context so that if people aren't paying attention the first time around, their brain can sort of put the pieces together and work out what you were likely to have been talking about. To help people understand the page we want to make the useful 25% of our content stand out; we want it to be easily scanned.
Search Function
Ideally your customer should be able to search your website using a search function. This enables them to easily and quickly find the info they want.
Background Colour
The sites background colour should be light, not a dark colour, so it's easy for the user to read and comprehend.
Form Design
When asking a user to fill out online forms, it's vital that the user understands what to fill out and what's going to happen after they've submitted it. Otherwise they'll either not bother to submit information or likely feel confused. Online forms must be created in a way that's clear and easy to follow.
To get a user friendly website call 0800 686 237 now or email us about a website.