3 Crucial Aspects that Help Build a User Friendly Website Environment

As soon as visitors land up on a website, they get cracking on finding the information that they need. If they don’t find this information in double quick time, they go on to some other site.

This is the reason why designers have switched from crafting website designs having varying degrees of complexity with respect to design elements and related aspects to websites that are visually appealing, yet very simple to understand and use. These websites offer users the kind of environment that helps optimize their use.

As a visitor you must have used many websites that are tremendously user friendly, but you might not have given a thought to the various aspects that must have contributed to their design. Let’s take a look at some of them.

User Friendly Design is User Centered

Very evident, isn’t it, but an aspect that is often ignored by designers. The fact whether a website is user friendly or not will be determined by the user, so it makes sense to keep them involved at every stage of the design process. Now, it’s quite impossible to ask for a potential user’s suggestion, opinions, likes, dislikes and expectations after every stage of the website designing process. So, what must be done is that designers need to put their finger on the pulse of their users and understand their essential needs and requirements with respect to the website that is being designed. By identifying the user group, you can prioritize their needs and ensure that your website design is able to implement the solutions that cater to those needs.

Design Consistency is the Key

By maintaining a consistency of design elements between all web pages of the website, you can boost the usability of your website. I know, you are saying to yourself, “this is quite obvious”. Of course it is, but this does not take away from the fact that there are plenty of websites out there that are not consistent with their layout, background colors, textures and typography throughout the website. This does not mean that all your pages must be perfectly similar to each other in terms of their layout and other design elements; the home page of a website will have certain dissimilarities with the services page, but any drastic change in layout creates usability issues. For e.g. if you have used a white background throughout your site, but the services page, for some reason, has a grayish background, it’s going to affect its visual coherence. So, keep it consistent.

Intuitive Page Elements

I don’t want to be accused of keeping on stating pointers that look obvious at first glance. So, let me focus on a pointer that discusses an aspect that blends in so well with the design of a website that we don’t realize it’s there – Intuitiveness. A designer should implement certain elements that make the website more responsive. It could be something as simple, yet subtle as highlighting particular buttons when a cursor is placed over them. This performs two functions, firstly it tells the user that this button is a clickable element and secondly it helps project the importance of a particular button. A visual highlight can also be used in ecommerce websites to encourage your online shoppers to choose products that you want them to pick; this helps you limit the options presented to your online shoppers and saves them from ‘choice paralysis’.

But, it’s important to understand that such elements must be used only if they have a certain purpose in mind and not just because they look good. It’s important that your website doesn’t just look usable but is actually usable.

In Conclusion

This is by no means a list of all the aspects that go into the making of a usable site. Other aspects such as simplicity of drop down menus; logical navigation structures; limiting the use of gradient, drop-shadows and reflections; using Flash animation only when absolutely needed etc. are also very important. A usable website environment is essentially the coming together of diverse aspects that might change from one website to another.

Guest post by: Philip Donald has years of experience in various domains like Web Designing, Development, Project Management, Internet Marketing and more. He currently works for PLAVEB, which is a leading Website Development & Web Design Company based in Los Angeles, California.

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