5 Hints to Make Your Website More User-friendly

[This article was written by Deborah Tayloe.]

Websites are great. They act as information directories, points of contact, shop windows, all at once for businesses. Great websites can help personalize brands and act as effective sales channels. However, globally the conversion rate (the percentage of people actually making a purchase out of all the people visiting the website) for websites is only 3%!

Globally, websites are grossly underperforming on user-friendliness. Visitors are frustrated with the website, the layout, lack of information, cluttered information, unsecured payments, difficulty of transactions etc. However, there is often no mechanism for the visitor to reach out to the person behind the website and express their helplessness.

We are sharing 5 very simple yet very useful tips to help make your website highly user-friendly.

Be mobile ready

More than half of your website visitors are likely browsing your website on a mobile. Is your website ready for them? No matter how great the website, if it does not render seamlessly on a mobile, you are losing more than half of your intended target audience. Any work done on the website should be considered complete only when it renders equally well on laptop as well as mobile browsers. Not being mobile-ready could have potentially lasting effect on the website performance, brand perceptions as well as potential sales.

Load before they leave

Average attention spans are now down to 8 seconds, courtesy the snappy digital content. No matter how great the websites if it doesn’t load faster than 2 seconds (the average amount of time spent on Facebook videos), chances are the visitors would have left for a competitor’s website. In the interest of visual wizardry on your website, don’t compromise on loading time.

Don’t have links that go nowhere

We have all been there. Clicked on links that go nowhere and end finally in frustration makes users resort to other websites that can offer us a better experience. Use HTML validators that highlight invalid links. Periodically remove dead links that potentially affect the user experience on your website.

List and organize all information

Group information by relevant categories such as sales, contact details, price comparisons, product details etc. Organize similar information together. Consumers visit your website to understand more details about your product or evaluate how your product fares in comparison to your competitors. Make it easy for them to do so without stepping off your website. Some visitors may require getting in touch with you; list all possible contact options, including social media links, phone numbers, physical addresses, etc. to make it easier for them to reach out to you.

Add a search box upfront on the landing page of your website. This ensures that visitors can quickly find what they need on the website without even having to go through the entire layout.

An organized and simple layout can improve website conversion rates. By merely organizing the information, you are making it easy for your visitors to find, read and buy on your website.

Use only popular and reliable payment gateways

E-commerce marketing specialist Matej Markovic frequently advises his clients, “An e-commerce site owner must build user trust before he can build sales.” This is especially true when you are asking a stranger for to hand you her credit card.

If your website is also your E-commerce sales channel, then you need to carefully review the payment gateways listed on your website. Using little-known payment gateways can undermine the credibility of your website and hurt your sales potential. Transaction drop-offs can happen when visitors come across a payment gateway that they don’t know or trust.

We hope our highly effective and simple tips help you design a very user-friendly website experience. With these tips, you will soon have a website that will be a great point of interaction for your business.

Author Bio:

Deborah Tayloe is a digital content writer who contributes regularly to Neevee. She holds a degree in English from the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. When she’s away from the keyboard, you’ll likely find her in her kitchen baking cupcakes to unwind.