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Personal Website
Design
Website Appraisal
0845 226
2642
Reading, Berkshire |
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Good Website
Navigation and Usability
Click Here And It's Yours believe that good website
navigation is the most important feature to consider when designing
websites. Most people want to access specific information within three
clicks of entering the website. If people can't find the information
they want or need they will be unlikely to revisit your website.
There's no such thing as
a training class or a manual for a website. People don't want to wait.
Web users have a low tolerance for a difficult website design or slow
websites. And they don't want to learn how to use a home page. People
have to be able to grasp how the website works immediately after
scanning the home page — for a few seconds at most. If the design of
the website is confusing, you will lose them!
Incorporating usability into your
website design is an important feature for websites because it is the measure
of the quality of a user's experience surfing your web pages, whether it is
pure information or a transactional e-commerce site. Usability is a combination
of website design qualities that affect the user's experience with your
website, including:
How easily can a user find the
information they want.
This is a measure of
how fast a user who has never seen your website before can learn how
to carry out basic tasks like navigating to important site
information or completing a transaction. Is the website design
causing usability problems?
Efficiency of use.
How fast can a visitor
accomplish important tasks? Is the design of the website confusing
the user?
Memorability.
If a user has used
your website before, can they remember enough to use it effectively
the next time or do they have to start learning everything again? Is
there enough information to entice the customer into becoming a
return visitor.
Error frequency and
severity.
How often do users
make errors while using your website, how serious are these errors,
and how do users recover from these errors?
Subjective satisfaction.
How much does the user
like using your website? Is the website design distracting the user?
Site usability is
vital. Research from many respected bodies shows that users cannot
find the information they are looking for on websites around 60% of
the time. What this means is, many websites design do not measure up
to user expectation and users end up wasting time, become
increasingly frustrated, and are far less likely to make return
visits and spend money.
Forrester Research, a
very highly respected source, estimate several costs of bad website
design usability. The two most striking are:
Losing approximately
50% of the potential sales from a site as people can't find what
they need. Losing repeat visits from 40% of the users who do not
return to a website when their first visit resulted in a negative
experience.
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