Usability Factors in Web Design

Good Web Design requires keeping the end user in mind and the concept of 'User Experience', or UX, puts the visitor at the forefront of the design process.When a visitor arrives on a website, the site has a very short time to convince that person to stay. If it looks like a muddle, or it's not clear what the site is about, then chances are that the visitor will bounce away to somewhere more 'useful' for their purposes. Here are some factors to consider when designing or re-designing a website.

Navigation
The navigation should be clear and consistent. Bear in mind the 3 click rule in Web Design which indicates that any page on a website should not be more than 3 clicks away from the home page. Clarity is paramount. If the visitor gets lost, the user experience quotient is diminished. There should be a clear visual hierarchy. This means that it should be clear to the visitor which categories or topics fall into which parent pages. Sometimes this is difficult when it's not obvious where to put a topic. But try to make it as intuitive as possible. And always show them the way out, that is, always have the home page clickable with one click from wherever the user is.

The approach is the opposite to the design of casinos in Las Vegas. Here, the way out is signposted as per regulations, but it is not generally obvious. The idea is to keep people wandering around and gambling by making it difficult to leave. This works for casinos but won't work for your website.
The concept of 'visual affordance' in Web Design is relevant here. This is the idea that the visual design of an object (whatever that might be) should give some indication of how to use it. An example of this would be the shopping cart icon on an ecommerce site. The shopping cart image indicates to users that this is where you go to fulfil the purchase.

Utility and usability
Try not to get confused between the notions of 'utility' and 'usability'. Utility refers to the ability to do lots of useful things on a site. Usability refers to how easy it is for users to actually do those things. Usability shows how likely the user is to actually carry out the desired tasks. A visitor is less likely to make contact if that contact is hard to find. A visitor is less likely to buy if they are interrupted along the purchase path. For ecommerce in particular, once a visitor is engaged in the buying process, that process should be pared back to the minimum. Requests for extra details will only result in user frustration. And they won't return without a compelling reason.

Ecommerce
I'll give you an example of a frustrating user experience. I was looking for an iPhone online, for prices and specs and packages. What I got was a telco asking me for my customer no. which of course is buried with the bills that I try not to look at. So they put up an obstacle straight away. Presumably this was to store data about my interests for marketing purposes, but it's the wrong approach.

Mobile Interaction
How good does your website look on a mobile browser? If the answer is I don't know because I can't see it properly, then it's time to take action. An increasing amount of the visitors to your site are probably coming to you from mobile devices and this is set to increase further. In the absence of a mobile-enabled site or a site specifically designed for the mobile platform, your visitor is unlikely to have a good experience. Therefore, he is less likely to return and less likely to perform the desired action on your site. If you have used WordPress for your web design then you could look at installing a plugin such as WP Touch to render your site in a suitable way.

'Don't Make Me Think'
This is the title of a book by Steve Krug. It's a fantastic way to familiarise yourself with the principles of Usability and is a great (and quick) read.