Basic Website Usability Tips to Keep Customers Returning

In simple words, usability is what makes your website’s design pleasant and convenient for visitors. The more you know about how to improve this aspect, the higher chances to build a website that visitors will love. We put together a list of website usability tips meant to help you build an outstanding user experience, that will turn into higher conversion. How wouldn't want it?

You might know that your website has only 5-7 seconds to capture the attention of the visitors. During this frame time you have to make them stay longer and convince them that they came to the right place in order to find product or service they were looking for.

So how can you ensure that? It’s not that hard, you just need to arrange the content of your page in such way that all the vital information is at hand and the navigation is intuitive.

5 Website Usability Tips to Follow

Keep the most important information at the top of the home page

Since your website opens on homepage, it’s the first thing your visitors see. First of all, it must contain company’s name and logo. If you want your brand to obtain visibility in the digital environment – make sure you have a magnificent logo and clearly seen company’s name.

Content of the page must correspond its title

The last thing you want to do is to confuse your clients. If they came to buy mobile phones – make sure they will find what they are looking for right on the homepage.
Your company’s phone number must be right on top of the page. Thus, in case your potential client sees that you provide services he requires, he can easily find your phone number and call you.

Any promotions, seasonal, weekly, monthly discounts, sales and announcements of the same nature, must be on top of the home page or below the left menu. People like promotions and free things in general, which is why they will be more likely to browse other pages of your website in case they see promotions.

High contrast and pleasant color palette

Smart color scheme using is one of that website usability tips you really have to stick around. There exists an entire field, dedicated to studying color and its effects on human psychology.We perceive green as calming color, red as aggressive and alarming and so on. Combination of the right colors can attract target audience to your website and convince people that your company is the obvious choice. For example, in case your website deals with real estate or finances – it will be unwise to use an entire palette colors. Grey, white, black and dark blue will be more appropriate choices.

Contrast also plays a huge role in improving customer's’ perception of your website. And is one of those site elements that is going to affect your website usability if neglected. Black text on white background is considered ideal. Nevertheless, there can be various situations, where you want to play with the colors. In such case, when in doubt – open Word, write something and apply the colors you want to use. If you find the result irritating for the eye – don’t use it.

Call-to-action buttons must be easily accessible and visible
These elements people need to notice right away. You can use colors to stress them or make their outline brighter than the filling color.

Use familiar shapes

It’s not a secret that people love everything new, exciting and shining, however, some things need to be familiar for users, otherwise they will get irritated and simply leave your website.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If you want to create interesting buttons – use the same shape and assign them the usual purpose, but change their color and font of the inscription. Thus, people will not be disappointed, as clicking such buttons will get them where they want to go.

In general, you need to design your website keeping in mind what you would like to see on home page of any website you browse. It will be of great help in estimation of the overall website usability.

Related post:Button Design Techniques to Improve User Experience (UX)

Bottom line

Use these website usability tips to create a use-centered site that invite visitors stay longer and even buy from your website. Make sure all important information is properly displayed and there’s nothing that cause your visitors quitting. Placing vital info on the top, using pleasant color pallet, making call-to-action buttons visible and using familiar shapes are the basics of creating a great web usability.

Let us know if you have other website usability tips you implement to increase user experience in the comments section below.