Is your website user-friendly?

If you need tips on getting people to your website, first head to our SEO blog post to learn more about how to make your website work harder for you and show up in higher in search engine results.

But once you’ve got your audience to your website, it’s really important that the site is user friendly and straight forward for your customer to find what they’re looking for. Even the most aesthetically pleasing websites won’t help you reach your target is they aren’t easy to navigate and clear on what you offer.

You should first make sure you are very clear on the objective of your website to ensure it’s doing what you need it to and giving the right directions and call to actions to your customer. Every business is different, so every business will have different targets and objectives with their website. When designing your site try to only take visual inspiration from other sites and try to focus too much on the content and this may not be applicable to you.

For example: If your website is an information hub, you may want your website to be clearly set out into categories making the information easily digestible for the reader. You’ll also want to make sure your search function works effectively so that users can find what they are looking for.

If you are a service-based business, you’ll want to make sure it’s very clear on the first page what your services are, with easy to navigate directions on how to find more information, past work or clients and how to either book / buy or enquire about said services.

Once you are happy with your site, testing it is really important. Start by getting a group of potential customers to try out your website and be as honest as possible with feedback, this will tell you lots about the functionality and navigation of your site. You may think, as someone who knows your business inside out that your website is super clear and user friendly, but to get the perspective of a customer who may have never heard of you until they reach your website is priceless and may give you feedback points you’d never have thought of previously. There may be really important functions and features a customer would like to be able to see from your site which you haven’t currently created.

The second element you will really need to think about is multi-device / cross platform functionality. Most people access web pages on their phones and tablets, so although a website design starts with desktop it’s really important that the design works and is user friendly across mobile and tablet formats too.