Improving Website Usability Quickly - 9 Steps

In our blog, we have been writing for several years that business websites are created not only to please the owner, but also to please as many people as possible.

However, there are still many sites that unfortunately do not meet the requirements of usability.

This blog post provides a list of 9 steps to quickly improve your site's usability.

You can't even imagine how little you can sometimes do to make the end result just amazing.

So check out this list of small "little things" that, if done, can be extremely useful for your business.

Rapid improvement in website usability - how to achieve it?

1. Remove the "Home" menu item

Links to the main page under the form mentioned in the title of this subsection, or something like "Home" are already a thing of the past.

If the label of such a link has the name "Home Page", then such a link is wide enough. It takes up a lot of space.

Even if the label was not long and contained only the house icon, it would still be an extra element.

All this is because it is now customary to insert a link to the home page on the logo. Over the past few years, this has become an increasingly common practice - so common that it has now become standard.

The idea is that the top menu contains only the most important items. Moreover, the most relevant of them should be on the limbs. Then they become the most visible to the audience.

2. Link to phone numbers

Since mobile devices often make up more than half of the sources of visits to various websites, this type of activity is increasingly being given priority.

Namely, I mean to make the numbers "touchable" or "dialable".

Not so long ago it didn't matter much, whereas today we often want to get in touch with someone as soon as possible.

It is possible to copy and paste such a number to the right place in the so-called dialer, but it's much easier when you just touch the number... and that's it. The number is dialed, you just have to call.

3. Highlight links appropriately

Rapidly improving the usability of a website should of course also include checking all links.

They need to be highlighted correctly.

The basis, of course, is that they contrast not only with the background, but also with the "plain text".

In addition, it would be nice to make an effect appear when you hover over such a link. This way the user knows that this is the active element.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should check your site from time to time to make sure there are no links returning 404 status.

4.Give up the slider on the main page

Sliders usually seem cool only to site owners. When it comes down to it, users are no longer too addicted to them.

Why?

Because in general we care about the speed and efficiency of the site navigation process. Sliders mean that some of the content is not immediately visible. Not only will you have to wait for it, but you will also have to click on it several times to see all the slides.

What's more, some slides don't even offer navigation, leaving users at the mercy of the programmer at that particular moment.

You can read more about this topic in Bartlomey Kilyan's article: Should You Use Slides on Your Homepage?

In it you will find not only good arguments, but also a number of alternatives that are really effective.

5. Break large blocks of text into smaller ones and complete them with icons

If you want your content to be useful not only for search engine robots, but also for users, it's time to "lay it out".

Rows and columns are the best way to do this, and using them in combination with text can give an extremely aesthetically pleasing effect.

My goal is to make sure that all texts do not bother users. Not only in terms of content, but also in terms of presentation, since the "heavy" text is simply boring and does not encourage further reading.

Icons of various types are also useful, with the help of which you can effectively direct the visitor's gaze to different parts of the site.

They also reinforce the message by replacing multiple words with a single character.

6. In the contact form, indicate the option to send a copy of the message to your own mailbox

Rapidly improving the usability of your site may also include adding one field that can make a big difference.

This field, if it is checked, then the message through the form will also be sent to the user's mailbox.

This solution is becoming more and more common on websites, and this fact is not really surprising.

If we send an email manually (simply by creating a message ourselves and pasting the email address into the appropriate field), we feel much more secure than if we click the "Submit" button on the contact form. In the latter case, we have no guarantee that the message was actually sent.

The introduction of such a field increases the level of trust from this point of view.

7. If you have extensive navigation, put it in the footer

Sometimes it happens that a site has a large number of subpages, which together form an extensive network.

It can't always be neatly placed in the main menu - the one at the very top of the page.

In such cases, it is useful to create a kind of sitemap in the footer. It is not intrusive at all, since it is displayed only for those who decide to scroll the page to the very bottom.However, it is very useful for those sites whose network of subpages is very wide.

8. Make your site faster

Improving the usability of a website quickly can also include working on the speed of transitions between subpages.

Analyze your website with GTmetrix and Pingdom Website Speed ​​Test tools and see if the results are acceptable.

If something is wrong, be sure to look into the topic of improving the performance of your site.

If your site is based on WordPress system, then you win, as there are many add-ons for this CMS with which you can influence this state.

9. Improve the readability of texts

What exactly affects the readability of the text on a particular site?

There are several factors, the main ones are:

• font size
• font types
• text color
• line height

Changing the above parameters usually only takes a few minutes of work in CSS files. However, it has a significant impact on how readers perceive the text on a given web page.

Therefore, do your best to ensure that the parameters I mentioned are chosen well enough for users to find your site convenient.

Is it even possible to quickly improve the usability of a website?

Of course!

All of the above questions don't take much time to implement (assuming, of course, that the website isn't overly complex and difficult to use on the back side).

However, they can significantly affect how the site is perceived by users.

So I hope you find this guide useful.