ClearRiver Advertising and Marketing

Top ten tips for creating a better user experience on your Web site

By: Keith Heustis

There are common mistakes in Web design that I have come across in my work as a Web designer. I offer the advice below so that you can avoid some of them and make your site more enjoyable and valuable to your visitors.

1. No one likes to be force-fed

Music and video are a great way to give your visitors something interesting to interact with, but the user should have complete control. Automatically starting music and video as a Web page is loading is one of the worst things that you can do to your users.

Many people surf the Internet in public libraries, at work, or in the dead of night when others are asleep. Others may already have their favorite piece of music playing on their computer speakers. More often than not, auto-playing a music or video file will only cause a user to be annoyed and hit the back button immediately.

So, when you decide to put music and video on your site, make it a priority to give your users control over it through a robust user interface that includes play, stop, pause, a timeline scrubber, and volume control.

2. Content is king

Web copy is different from content written for other media. Writing for the Web means that your content must be short, scannable, and to the point. Your Web site should give users the information they need as quickly as possible. It should be written in common language that a visitor to your site would be likely to use.

Keyword density should also be considered in the content of your site. By identifying certain words as keywords well before any content is written, you can work these words into the content and include them in the keyword meta tags of your site pages for improved search engine visibility.

3. Leave my little browser alone!

Have you ever been surfing the Web and had the misfortune to click on a link that takes you to a site that suddenly expands or contracts your browser’s window? Many of these sites like to make your browser window fill the entire screen. Personally, I like to decide for myself how large my browser window should be.

Resizing a window is a bad idea, because it takes control away from the visitor. Chances are that the user knows or has made a conscious decision about the size they would like their browser window to be. Changing the size of their browser window is much the same as forcing them to listen to music or watch a video. If you would like to employ a full-screen experience, the best way to go about it is to give the user a choice with a set of controls that will toggle full screen on and off.

4. Don’t “Flash” me unless you really need to

While Flash is a wonderful technology for motion graphics, animation, video and audio, it has its limitations and should be used in moderation.

For starters, Internet browsers need a special plug-in to view Flash through the Web browser. This plug-in is not installed by some users and is not compatible on some operating systems and many mobile devices. Flash can also take a long time to load and use up a lot of memory because of the large file sizes that may be associated with it.

Perhaps one of the greatest drawbacks of Flash is its incompatibility with search engines. Google, Yahoo and other search engines cannot read the content in Flash like they can in HTML, making it very difficult to achieve good search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.

In the end, Flash should be thought of as a powerful tool that can deliver a compelling user experience, but only when used in moderation or in a context that absolutely requires features that only Flash can deliver.

5. Be on the lookout for visual noise

When it comes to effective Web design, less is more. This adage is especially true for Web sites that offer copious amounts of advertising space. Also known as ad clutter, this space not only annoys users but also greatly diminishes ad effectiveness and reduces traffic to the publisher’s site. In fairness to the advertiser and the publisher, Web ads should refrain from excess blinking/flashing or motion. While exceptions are allowed, for the most part, ads should be in a clearly defined area separate from the main content.

Web sites that offer advertising space are not the only sites susceptible to visual noise. In fact, the most common culprit responsible for cluttered Web sites is simply bad visual design practices, for instance, the overuse of icons, visually complex background images, lack of white space and use of too many type styles and font sizes. It takes a keen eye to discern how all these visual elements should function together and ultimately work in harmony to help the user find what they seek.

6. Invisible links?

One of the first things that I scan for when entering a Web site is all the possible places I could go. I look for links. Surprisingly, many sites do not clearly differentiate links from content. Looking for hidden or invisible links is not how I like to spend my spare time.

Links should be visible at first glance and identified by a different style, color or icon/symbol. If you really want to be safe and make sure users can locate your links, underline them. The underline is burned so deeply into the psyche of Internet users that it's always a good way to indicate links. This conditioning also means that you should never use underlines for anything else unless the meaning of the underline is clearly explained.

7. Don’t be shy

Most sites do offer their visitors a way to contact the owner, however the ease of finding this information – or even its availability – varies from site to site. Even if you own a site that does not require others to contact you, because you aren’t selling anything or offering any services, you should still make that information available.

Having your contact information available is important for several reasons. For one, it adds a layer of validity to your site or business. If users can see that you have a physical address, phone number and email, the information on your site will instantly gain another level of trust for the user. In addition, it’s wise to have contact information so that general inquiries can be made. Maybe a visitor caught an error or typo and would like to let you know, or better yet would like to buy your domain name for $100,000. How would you know if you didn’t make your contact information available? Lastly, make your contact information not just available, but easy to reach. It’s good practice to place a link to your contact information on every page.

8. Faster is always better

Nothing is worse than waiting too long for a Web site to load. Recent common wisdom suggests that users will wait only five to eight seconds for a page to load before becoming frustrated and potentially leaving your site. If your pages don't fully load within 10 seconds on an average broadband connection, search engines are going to penalize your Web site, and people are going start avoiding it, especially those on dial-up or cellular Internet connections. The following factors can all contribute to a slow-loading site: poor-quality Web hosting, too many graphics, un-optimized graphics or poor coding.

9. Have you optimized?

As mentioned above, un-optimized graphics can slow down your site. Many people who post photos to the Web forget or don’t know the importance of optimization. For instance, let’s say you have some digital photos that you are going to post on your site. Raw photos straight out of your camera are usually at least 5 megs in size, or more if you have a nicer camera. Optimization is the process of reducing that file size. The process can be done with any modern image-editing program and will drastically improve the load time of your site. Learn how to properly edit photos before using them in your Web site, or rely on the services of a professional.

10. No one likes filling out forms

If you’re anything like me, you probably detest having to fill out an online form. In general I find that on the Web forms are used too often, are usually too long and ask too many unnecessary questions. If you are going to have a form on your Web site make sure that it follows some of these basic guidelines:

• Don’t ask questions that are not absolutely needed. For example the visitor’s Salutation, Position/Job Title, Mailing Address, may not be needed on a simple contact form. If it’s not needed, don’t ask for it.
• Try to minimize mandatory fields unless they really are mandatory.
• Seek to support the autofill feature of modern Web browsers by avoiding unusual field labels (just use Name, Address, etc.).

In the end, just remember that the more questions you ask, the lower your form submission rate will be.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, being aware of these issues and finding solutions to them will have a profoundly positive effect on your site and help give your visitors a comfortable user experience.

If after reading this post you feel your site could use a little tune-up, maybe we can help you. Contact us and we’ll spend some time with you free of charge to see what we can do.

Take care,
Keith Heustis