As much as your website should reflect your business in a positive manner,
it should be appealing to your target audience as well as easy to navigate.
There are many different usability variables to take into account during
a website redesign. At Dynamic Digital Advertising (DDA), a professional
custom website redesign and development company, we address issues of
navigation, content, interactive features, and more to ensure that every
visitor who enters your site leaves with a great impression and is persuaded
to invest in your company.
Devote 10% of Your Budget to Website Usability
for an Average of 135% Increase in Metrics
Ease of use derives from conducting systematic usability analysis throughout
the website redesign process. To gain insight into both user behavior
and recommended design improvements, websites are evaluated based on
metrics assessment, which tracks every action a visitor takes on a website
- how much time they spend on a given page, what links they click on
or pages they visit, if they hit their browsers back button or take
your call to action, etc.
In a recent study analyzing data from 42 cases
where usability metrics were available for website redesigns, it was
revealed that their metrics increased by 135% after they devoted 10%
of their budget to usability improvements. Increased metrics means increased
return on investment (ROI). While converting usability improvements
to dollars for e-commerce sites is easy as the ROI directly relates
to the number of sales, other types of design projects can be harder
to convert as the value of increased customer satisfaction and more
website traffic varies between companies. Regardless, it is proven that
usability gains far exceed the costs and the proof is in the numbers.
User-friendly features for your website
redesign can include,
but are not limited to:
Contact Emails and Forms
Your visitors may have questions about a particular service or product
and would like to get in touch with a representative to seek further
information. With contact emails, visitors can send their comments or
questions directly to the right person. For those concerned with spam
type email, consider contact input forms, which allow visitors to email
you without revealing your email address.
Print Page Function
Let visitors to your website print the articles they like without images
that can distort the page. By using the print page function, visitors
can click on an icon on the page and print a text only version of the
article.
FAQs
Visitors to your website will often have questions that are not readily
answered on the main pages of the website. An FAQ will allow you to
develop a page of Frequently Asked Questions about your business. You
can change the FAQ at any time based on customer input.
Search Tools
With a search tool implemented on the main page or strategic pages,
people can articulate what they need and are able to type it into a
search box. As long as the search results show the word in context or
show a clear description of results, they are likely to recognize suitable
pages from the search results.
A-Z Indexes
A-Z indexes allow users to find the information they are looking for
based on a word, term, or phrase. As long as the A-Z index contains
what the user is thinking of, all they need to do is read down the list
and spot the right item. Keep the list up-to-date with what users are
looking for by referencing user search logs.
Website Accessibility Techniques
Make your website accessible and usable by everyone regardless of their
ability or disability. According to W3C, the governing body of the World
Wide Web, up to 20% of people are affected by some form of disability.
A significant portion of people with disabilities can benefit from web
sites specifically designed to be more accessible. With DDA's website
accessibility techniques, we can build websites that adhere to the standards
of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and the Website Accessibility
Initiative (WAI).
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