Why a User-Friendly Website is Essential for Business Success
Explore The Basics of a User-Friendly Website. How Simple Design Improves User Experience, Accessibility, Engagement, and Conversions
A user-friendly website allows its visitors to access information they need quickly and without unnecessary delay. Simply put, the visitor should not need to work too hard to locate the information. The lesser the number of clicks needed to get there, the more user-friendly and user-oriented the website is.
For making a user-friendly website, it is important that the developer listens to what the visitors have to say. The website should be designed after taking into account the needs and the preferences of the visitors.
The more user-friendly a website is, the easier it becomes to retain the visitors and give the website's competitors a tough fight. A visitor that can steer through the website without stumbling every now and then, has a higher chance of turning into a buyer. They will even spread the word about how easy the website is to use.
When designing a website, there is a tendency of completely ignoring the visitors with special needs. Website developers need to take them into account and make sure that the website is accessible for them too.
Why does a website need to be user-friendly?
A user-friendly website is essential for ensuring visitors have an enjoyable experience, leading to higher engagement, trust and conversions.
Here’s why every business should prioritize building user-friendly site:
1. Enhanced User Experience (UX)
- A user-friendly website makes navigation easy.
- Forrester Research found that improving UX can increase conversion rates by up to 400%.
- A great design helps improve user experience by reducing frustration.
2. Higher Engagement and Reduced Bounce Rates
- Poor navigation leads to higher bounce rates.
- 53% of mobile users abandon websites if they take more than 3 seconds to load (Google).
- A simple website design helps retain visitors and boosts engagement.
3. Accessibility for All Users
- Accessibility features make a website user-friendly for everyone.
- Over 1 billion people worldwide live with disabilities (WHO).
- A user-friendly website ensures everyone can navigate it easily, improving overall experience.
4. Increased Conversion Rates
- Simple navigation and clear CTAs lead to better conversions.
- HubSpot found that simplifying navigation increases conversions by 16-20%.
- A simple website design helps guide users to take action.
5. SEO Benefits and Higher Visibility
- Google prioritizes fast, mobile-responsive websites.
- Websites that load in 2.5 seconds and are mobile-friendly get 75% more clicks.
- A user-friendly website helps improve search rankings and visibility.
6. Builds Trust and Credibility
- A polished, professional website increases trust.
- 75% of users judge a company’s credibility based on its website design.
- A simple website design boosts credibility and trust.
7. Adaptability to Mobile Devices
- 60% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices (Statista, 2023).
- A user-friendly website works seamlessly across all devices.
- Non-responsive websites can lose 50% of potential sales due to poor mobile experience.
8. Cost Efficiency and Long-Term Value
- Fixing usability issues later costs up to 100 times more than addressing them early (IBM).
- Investing in a simple website design saves money and ensures long-term success.
By focusing on a user-friendly website, businesses can improve user experience, increase engagement, and drive conversions. A simple website design helps meet user needs and improves performance.
Here, we try to focus on the basics of a User-Friendly Website - key design principles that ensure smooth navigation, quick load times, and mobile responsiveness, all contributing to a better user experience.
Understanding User Experience (UX)
The concept of user experience and how it influences website effectiveness
A website needs to be effective enough for visitors to become customers. By giving the visitors a good user-experience, you are going to be on the right path towards gaining potential customers.
For a good user experience, however, you have to work on it a bit. You have to design your website to give it accessibility, reliability, and last but not the least, desirability.
a. Accessibility
If the visitors fail to navigate and find the information that they are looking for, they are not going to spend much time on the website. They will leave and turn to your competitors. To add more, the website should not be designed in such a way that the visitors question their technological literacy.Websites do have a target audience; however, some audiences are more skilled technologically than the others. Even then, a website should be designed in a way that a wide range of people, regardless of how computer-literate they are, should be able to use it on a basic level.
b. Reliability
One thing that always works is being active socially. You have to make the visitors believe that this is not just another website. Having a social media presence means the visitors get to connect with other visitors and customers of the website.In the olden days, transactions through websites were mostly robotic. There was no system that would allow the visitor to get quick answers to their queries. The most one could do back then was send an email or dial a number.
Be that as it may, times have changed. We are now overwhelmed by social media interactions. Most websites, if not all, have the option of doing live chat. Outside the website, they have pages and groups on popular social media platforms.
By incorporating social media elements and buttons on your website, you can show that you are ready to engage with the visitors however they prefer.
You have to allow your visitors to share the website's contents on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any other mainstream social media platforms available.
Another way to earn reliability is by posting customer reviews and testimonials on the website. It is always a good idea to engage with your customers and hear what they have to say. This way the existing ones feel that they have received the righteous treatment. While the potential ones slowly start to gain trust.
Including name and affiliations of the companies that take your service also goes a long way. It shows visitors that you not only serve individuals, but also have the capacity to take on bigger projects.
A trust badge is helpful when it comes to presenting your company as reliable. When the visitor sees the trust badge on the website, they relax as they can tell that you are a company with whom it is low risk to do business with.
If you are out there for badges, go for - security trust badges, payment badges, endorsement badges, or anything that you can find. To get one, you need to go on the internet, do your own research and find a provider with reputation. The providers are known as certificate authority (CA).
c. Desirability
Now this is section that is dedicated not just to the aesthetics or looks, but more than that. Of course, in order for a website to be in sync with the times, it needs to look modern. However, that should not come at the cost of losing accessibility.
Having an appealing website can, to a point, get you points as trustworthy, but it will only take you so far. In other words, spending too heavily on the look of your website does not give you the license to compromise on accessibility and the reliability.
We talk at length about some of the ways in which the desirability of websites can be increased in the following paragraphs.
Key Elements of a User-Friendly Website
Visitors can decide if they want to stay or leave your website in a matter of seconds. Sometimes, if the website is confusing or is frustrating, if it makes the visitors work too hard to what they are after, well they will leave.
Here, we discuss some of the ways using which you can ensure that your visitors and customers have a pleasant time wandering about.
a. Clear Navigation
Website navigation is the system using which people can move about conveniently through the various sections and pages of the website. It is a collection of the menus, buttons, etc. that allows the visitor to interact and deal with the content of the website.
A nicely drawn and designed navigation system allows the visitors to find what they are looking for. Also, they are inspired and encouraged to wander and discover on their own. Often, if the website is friendly (with a good, consistent navigation menu), chances are that the visitors are going to stay longer. They might even go ahead and make their purchase, or purchase an extra item that they initially had not planned upon.
The first navigation bar, usually placed on top of the menu, consists of direct links to the most important sections of the site - Home, Services, Contacts, and as such.
There are many different navigational bars that are in use today. The most popular ones are given below -
- Top Navigation bar - This one is the most-widely used. It is located at the very top of the website and usually contains hyperlinks to the most desired, sought-after parts of the website, for instance - Home, Services, Pricing, About, etc.
- Vertical Sidebar Navigation - This on is located on the left-side of the website. Here, the menu items are placed one on top of another. Usually, upon clicking on the menu, the sidebar opens up. The advantage here is that, as the menu only comes alive when clicked, and goes away when not needed, there is space that you can use.
- Navigation - Designers say that Breadcrumb navigation is the easiest way to find the way back on a website. This helps the visitor to retrace their way back to the desired location without hitting the back button on the browser countless times.
- Footer - The Footer is located at the bottom of the website. It includes an extended list of various links. One might think that the visitors do not really use the footer, however, if used properly, the footer can make navigation further easy.
The best thing about the footer is that it is available from any page of the site. As a result, you do not need to worry about using up space. Footers can give your website an SEO boost as there are a lot of information in those.
All in all, when designing a navigation bar, keep in mind the following three things -
- It should allow the visitor to reach the part of the site that they want to, conveniently, and without any unnecessary confusion or difficulty.
- Make sure that the visitor can understand or learn the navigating system in the shortest amount of time.
- Everyone has a target audience. However, you have to ensure that most of your target audience can access and use the website with relative ease.
b. Responsive Design
There was a time when the internet was only to be used on computers. In this modern day and age, almost 80 percent of the visitors view websites from their mobile devices. That is why it is important that you incorporate mobile optimization on your website.
Through mobile optimization, visitors will be able to visit the website through their small-screened mobile devices. This will make your website visually appealing, without compromising the functionality, when viewed through the small screens of a smart phone or a tablet.
Now, why are we after Mobile Optimization:
For better user experience
A website that has been optimized for mobile devices will load faster. It is also going to be easy to navigate. Also, the buttons are going to be appropriately sized so that it is easy to use on small-screened devices.
For better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Rankings
Search engines direct more traffic towards websites that are optimized for mobile devices.
For more sale
Almost everyone has a smart phone today. By optimizing websites, you are increasing your chances of converting a visitor to a customer. If the visitor has to browse an unoptimized website through their phone, chances are that they are going to get frustrated and then leave.
c. Fast Load Times
In this day and age, people want everything instantly. They appreciate websites that respond with immediacy. Visitors show only a little patience when they are dealing with slow and unresponsive sites.
Here are some ways in which you can optimize and increase the speed of your site -
- Image Optimization - Get your images into smaller sizes. However, make sure that the quality is not hampered.
- Caching - This allows the website to save some of the resources locally, on the visitor's device. That way the when repeat visitor is requesting to see a page, it will load faster.
- Content Delivery Network (CDNs) - By using CDN, you can store crumbs of data or copies of your site assets in data centers around the world. So, when the visitor demands it, the loading is going to be faster.
- Code Simplification - By cleaning up the CSS and JavaScript files, the load times is reduced.
d. Readable Content
Make sure that the language and tone that you are using is accepted and understood by the audience that you are targeting. Failing to do so will only increase frustration resulting in the audience ditching your site for your competitor's well-made site.
Pay close attention to the language of the headings and the content that you are publishing. Make sure that your content is driven by what is in demand with your target audience. One way to attracting newer viewers, or giving your existing ones more ease is by including keywords in the title.
Also, mark it that search engines are designed to give more importance to headlines rather than the content. By using keywords on the title and description of your products, you will be able to improve the search ability.
By ensuring content readability, you will be able to create a website that your audience is more likely to consume. Get rid of tough vocabulary, long winding sentences that has multiple clauses attached to it. Short sentences that have simple sentences are going to attract more visitor.
Also, stop the habit of using long paragraphs. Long paragraphs often demotivate readers from reading on. Shorter paragraphs are easier to consume and understand.
If possible, use more bullet points and make your sentences concise. You can also move away from using sophisticated, fancy fonts. A simple font can be elegant, that too, without compromising the readability.
Writing in short sentences, easy words, and employing a conversational tone gives out the idea that you are personally talking to your audience. And, people like to engage on a personal level. That is why, even in this day and age of internet shopping, companies still open physical shops. According to them, customers like to talk to someone before they make a purchase. A conversational tone used to promote a product does just that.
Images can help too. Lot of the times, a simple image can say more than a paragraph that keeps going on and on. A carefully sorted out appropriate image can help your cause more. According to seasoned writers and web-site designers, the sweet spot is one image per 100 words. If you cannot respect that then go for one image every 500 words.
Finally, once you are done with the write up, go through the text. To make things more precise and compact, work on your headings, subheadings, and paragraphing. Get rid of whatever seems to be in excess. When reading, if you find yourself slowing down, the same is going to happen to your audience too. The idea is to ensure a free-flowing, smooth-reading content.
e. Visual Hierarchy
Has it ever happened to you that you visit a website and while on the home page you feel that you do not know where to look? Well, it is a case of missing out on having a good and clear visual hierarchy.
What are the elements of a clear visual hierarchy -
- Size - The rule of thumb is to make the more important logos, words, and sections bigger, and lesser important ones smaller. That way the reader is going to automatically know where to focus even before they had a chance to go through the content thoroughly.
- Color - Brighter colors will get hold of the attention of the visitors. Also, by using color contrasts, you will make things eye-catching. Color contrasts, when used effectively, can increase the readability of your content.
- Alignment - Pushing things out of the alignment when needed, will make the visitor notice it more.
- Repetition - Repetition can help you put something in the mind of the visitor. Writers, poets, advertisers, politicians, and other creative thinkers use this technique all the time. When it comes to styling, by using repetition, you can show connection between two pieces.
- Closeness - By putting two things close to each other, you can show that these are related.
- Whitespace - White space is the empty space around texts and images in a website. In other words, it is invisible. And, even then, the way you use it can increase or decrease the readability of your content.
In today's capitalist world, where money-making takes the fore-front, many do not want to leave any unused spaces. They want to bombard both sides of the texts on their website with advertisements that redirect when clicked.
It is not a bad thing, advertising earns money. However, website visitors can get frustrated if they frequently get redirected or if it becomes hard for them to concentrate.
Incorporating User Feedback
User testing is key to ensuring a final product that will stick with the target audience.
Now, what is user testing?
Well, during the initial designing process, a designer might ask the visitors to go through the website and give constructive criticism and feedback. Later on, the designer can take into account those feedbacks and incorporate changes to the website accordingly. This way, the user experience of that particular website can be improved.
Some say that websites can never be a finished product and designers can never be done with designing a website. They are always going on making tweaks here and there according to user reviews and the changing times. Hopefully, the useability of the website improves each time.
Accessibility Considerations
An accessible website should be inclusive. Meaning that, it should not just be designed for the use of the able-bodied target visitor, but also for the ones with disabilities. Also, the format in which the information is provided should be in sync with the available technologies. All of this is to ensure that the visitor gets a smooth experience while on the site.
A good, accessible, inclusive website allows its visitors to navigate with ease, without losing their way, and interact with the content without having to jump hurdles. By understanding the nook and crannies of accessibility, you will not only improve the user experience, but also earn yourself some loyal customers.
Here are some guidelines to make your website more accessible -
- Make sure that there are alternatives for the non-textual elements of your website. Non-text elements include - images, videos, and audio files. It should be accessible to the ones that are visually impaired.
- Content should be accessible from different devices regardless of the screen sizes.
- The website should be accessible to a person without a mouse. Meaning that if anyone chooses, they should be able to navigate the website using a keyboard.
- It is best to avoid content that can cause seizures. If you must, provide sufficient warnings.
- For first time visitors, it is always helpful if they have a guide on how to navigate and use the website most effectively.
- Finally, ensure that the content is readable and understandable. See that your visitors do not need to expend a lot of energy or thoughts when using the website.
Website Consistency
We are out there to build a website that is consistent with everything starting from the heading size, font, colors, buttons, spaces, and other whatnots. All of these should fall under a common theme, and that should be maintained all throughout the website. If one page looks drastically different from the other one, the visitors are going to stop and wonder if they are still on the same site or not.
A sense of unfamiliarity might also strike if you make unnecessary changes frequently. For instance, if the visitor returns to your website and finds that the way the menu unfolds has been changed, then they might get irritated. That is why a consistent design that does not get changed very often is essential.
Look at the following avenues of consistency -
- External Consistency - You need to maintain a similarity, consistency between different platforms. The browser-accessed website and the app should look the same.
- Internal Consistency - The color palette that you have used should apply to all the pages. Like it says in the aforementioned paragraph, the visitor should not feel that they are on a different website when they move from one page to another.
- Functional Consistency - All the elements and their characters should work similarly. For instance, if the menu on the navigational bar is a drop down one, then it should be applied to all the other sections too. The response should be predictable and reader should not be in for an unwelcomed surprise.
- Visual Consistency - This is about visual styling. Make sure that there is a consistency on the website, from font to the icons.
Effective Call-to-Action (CTAs)
Small phrases, even a single word, that tells the visitor to take an action on a website is called a Call-to-Action or CTA. Not just websites, CTAs are widely used in landing pages, emails, and advertisements.
These are mostly words that have earned the clickbait tag due to repeated use. These phrases or words are mostly put on buttons which upon clicking are going to take the visitor to a product or service that the website carries.
Making good CTAs can be important in making your website grow. It is effectively used by advertisers all over the world
Follow these for making effective CTAs -
- Command Words - These words carry a sort of urgency with them. As a result, these have a power to make the visitor take prompt action. CTA that are vastly popular today - Subscribe, Add to Cart, Sign Up, Buy Now, See More, and other what nots.
- Brief and Simple - It has now almost become customary to use CTAs that are short - most are not more than two words. Making your CTA longer means that it will lose the urgency or the command.
- Find out what you audience is after - If the audience that you are serving this to needs more time to place a newly released product, then the chances are that they need more convincing. In that case, the CTA could be 'Find Out, 'Know More' or something as such.
- Easy to find - CTAs should be easy to locate. Usually, CTAs are neatly placed on top of a button where the visitors are to click. In order to make it easily detectable, pay attention to the size of the button. Also, make sure the colors are contrasting.
Transform Your Online Presence with a User-Friendly Website Designed by Future Digit
Your website is the digital face of your business, and a user-friendly website is key to keeping visitors engaged and converting them into loyal customers. A user-friendly website ensures visitors stay engaged, navigate easily, and return for more.
At Future Digit, we specialize in designing websites that combine simple website design with cutting-edge technology to meet the core W3C Standards. Our designs prioritize user-focused features and seamless functionality, making it easy for visitors to navigate and engage with your content.
By integrating SEO optimization, we ensure your site ranks higher in search results & driving more organic traffic. Our team of digital marketers and web developers use proven design principles to create visually appealing layouts while maintaining top-notch technical performance. From mobile responsiveness to fast loading speeds, every element is tailored to enhance user experience and boost conversions.
Future Digit is your trusted partner for websites that balance creativity with functionality. Let us build a great website that performs exceptionally for your business.
Frequently Asked
A user-friendly website is easy to browse, quick to load, and mobile-friendly. It becomes more convenient for your visitors to find information. Know that - clear structure, minimal clutter, and a smooth browsing experience - are key components.
A websites User Experience (UX) is built around –
a. loading speed
b. mobile responsiveness,
c. simplified navigation, and enhancing
d. content readability.
Regularly conducting user testing and implementing feedback is a must. Future Digit specializes in these strategies. They will offer you solutions based on this, exactly cut to your requirements.
A simple website design allows distraction-free navigation. It allows users to focus on key content or actions. Simple designs improve usability by guiding users with a clear visual hierarchy and intuitive navigation.
Mobile optimization means that users will be able to experience the website on their phone. For the ultimate user experience, the website needs to load fast and content must be easy-to-read. Google’s mobile-first indexing gives priority to mobile-friendly websites in search rankings. This makes it important for SEO and user satisfaction.
Websites that load quickly prevent user frustration and reduce bounce rates. This can directly impact the SEO and conversion rates. Optimizing images, minimizing redirects, and allowing browser caching are some ways to boost speed.
Common mistakes include -
a. Cluttered layouts
b. Slow page loading
c. Poor mobile optimization
d. Hard-to-find navigation
A simple website design and consistent branding can avoid these pitfalls.
To make a website accessible, it should comply with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). This includes –
a. Using alt text for images
b. Allowing keyboard navigation
c. Providing text alternatives for multimedia content
Future Digit focuses on creating inclusive websites, ensuring that accessibility is part of the core design process.
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Published: Jan 06, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Future Digit Team
Future Digit leads in digital solutions. We build websites for business success and unlock growth with targeted marketing.
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