Websynergi Design Usability Of Our Web Design

Why is web usability so important?

Unless your customers can use your website properly it is not going to repay your investment in it. If your website has been around for some time, or was not designed by a professional, it would be advisable to have an assessment of its usability. If potential customers find a website inefficient, slow, confusing or difficult to navigate they usually complain to their friends, not to the site owners! This cannot be good for business.

Questions you should ask

If you have an existing website you should seriously consider its usability. Look at the website and ask these questions:

• Is the navigation logical to users, especially first-time visitors?
• Does the website load quickly?
• Do the links work - can the search engine find all the pages?
• Is the structure consistent with that of other websites?
• Is the text easy to read?
• Does the website have barriers to usability such as a requirement to register to obtain information, or a need to download extra software?
• Is the website cluttered with advertisements and unnecessary, irritating graphics that reduce its usability?

What can be done to improve usability?

When Websynergi Design create bespoke websites, usability is central to the design process. Our customers, whether small or large businesses or not-for-profit organisations, can be confident that visitors to their website will be able to use its facilities in a confident and relaxed manner and return to it again and again.

Websynergi Design can also review and assess existing websites to check usability. Strategies we employ to maximise usability include:

• Ensuring the website adequately and accurately reflects your business;
• Using our web design skills to improve the look and feel of the website;
• Improving usability of text and layout so that important items stand out when text is scanned by viewers and information is easy to read;
• Upgrading website navigation by employing the conventions that users have learned to expect on internet sites;
• Applying search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies to ensure search engines can index all the pages on your website;
• Inserting ample internal and external links;
• Ensuring that the website meets national and international standards of accessibility for disabled people.

Never forget that your website is an investment and if its usability is impaired, then so also will be your profit from it:

• Every £1 invested in improving your website's usability returns £10 to £100 (source: IBM)
• A web usability redesign can increase the sales/conversion rate by 100% (source: Jakob Nielson)

We can assist with:

• Reviewing and assessing the usability of your existing website
• Making changes to your exsting website to improve usability
• Creating a new, fully usable bespoke website