Tips to create a user friendly website

Every website has a purpose behind it. In addition, with every purpose there are a lot of dreams, objectives and vision attached to web design. Every page and every section carries some amount of hope in it. Designing a website is not just a software development, it is also an art that cannot be achieved easily, until and unless the person is creative, has the right blend of ideas and knows basics to keep the visitors engrossed. However, many a times when the self-taught web designers design the web pages they tend work in their own peripheries and they do not try to widen their horizons. As a result, they may deliver an appealing website but the website fails on retaining users and on parameters of best website designing. If few basic things are ignored during designing, the ready structure may irate the user and enforce him to logout. Let's not create only a website, let's create a user friendly website with creative web design.

Maximise the Ease of Navigation

• Hyperlinks should always take a user to the desired information, so ensure smooth navigation.
• Logo should be linked to the home page i.e. a click on Logo should lead the visitors to the home page.
• The main navigators (links) should also be on footer with few additional links (as per requirement)
• Maintain consistency of navigation on each webpage.
• Current location of user should be highlighted on navigation bar.
• The information given on the page can be provided with the link(s) where the same information can be browsed in detail.
• Do not ignore Breadcrumb navigation, its indispensible for a user-friendly website.
• Provide a link right there, In case information available on the current page has more detail on other page.
• If any link is given with the content (anywhere apart from navigation bar), it should always be underlined.
• Follow right kinds of strategy to bring a user back on the desired page.
• Title attribute on a link increases the cognizance of users.

Presentation of Text

• Presentation of Text
• Presentation of text plays an important role in good website designing.
• Keep the text font large enough (not less than 12px)so that the visitor does not face problems while reading it.
• The font sizes should be flexible.
• Spacing between lines should be justified.
• One line should have maximum 45 to 60 characters in order to ensure to get compatible with eye span.
• Say is loud with colors, styles, font selection and font size; prioritize the important text using these tools.

Content

• As far as jargons are concerned, their usage should be avoided or at least minimized.
• Writing in Inverted Pyramid Style adds to readability.
• Its content should be concise, fact full and most importantly reader friendly.
• Always choose words, which are easy to be interpreted by the target users.
• Spelling errors or misspelled words might lead to ambiguity.
• Refurbishment of the web content pays in its own way.
• Content should be presented in apposite format, like title, headings, sub headings etc.
• Important parts of lengthy content should be highlighted in inverted commas.
• Keep the content short and succinct.
• Follow the standard rule for Letter Case in content. Never use all capitals, it hampers the instant recognition of words.

Check Compatibility

• Every page should be printable.
• All the pages should be compatible to scanning.
• It should be well tested on different browsers and operating systems like Google Chrome,
• Internet Explorer, Firefox Mozilla etc.

Interactive Sections

• Feedback Forms/Enquiry Forms or any type of form should be provided with an icon like button to perform submission.
• Shortness of the forms is necessary. Only the most essential fields should be there in forms.
• The opinions and preferences of the users should be duly incorporate.
• Allow interactivity through the medium of Comments, Forums etc.

Others yet Important

• Catchy sitemaps have no use, so ensure only a text sitemap.
• Images displayed on website should be optimized to ensure that they could be downloaded at a faster speed.
• URL or domain of website should be short and in sync with the purpose of website.
• The result shown from search option should restate the key Phrase (the phrase used to search this page)
• Title of each webpage should be in accordance to its key purpose; especially the home page should never be renamed with fancy titles like Welcome Page etc.
• Scrollbars at the bottom irate the users.
• Avoid new opening of tabs/windows (Yes, excluding PDF and other embedded documents)
• The links once browsed by visitors should be highlighted in different colour/style.