We do usability reports all the time here, and thought we’d share a few of the most common usability mistakes we find to help you make your site easier to use. Remember, the easier your site is to navigate, the more revenue it will generate.
1. Avoid Me! Me! Me!
The single most common usability mistake made today is companies constantly referring to themselves and how great they are. It’s so common because everyone wants to give the impression they are credible and experienced. However, while you’re talking about yourself, your visitors are thinking, “What about me?” Just remember, it’s your site. You’ve already gotten the visitor there. Don’t waste their time by addressing your awards or capabilities before their needs. Put the focus on how your experience and greatness relate specifically to what they want from you, and why. In short, change every “we” to “you” and you’ll see instant improvement in your site.
2. Have a goal
What do your visitors want from your site? What do you want them to do as a result of using your site? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, your site will be difficult to navigate. You should organize your site with these goals in mind, and make them obvious right away on your homepage.
Your visitors should always be on the easy path towards your goal, whether that be contacting your sales staff, adding items to their cart, finding directions to your office, etc. Often, you’ll have distinct user groups shooting for different goals. Pick the few most important and keep users on task through those click-paths.
3. Be self-evident
Your visitors are not going to spend time thinking about what anything means. They’ve come to your site with a specific purpose, and if they can’t quickly scan to find a decent match for that purpose right away on your site, they’re done. Self-evidence is usually a combination of a few things: short copy chunks, clear visual relationships, and placement on the page. Think of the picture menu at McDonalds: visual and concise. This rule holds true for all levels of education, all types of products. No one reads a website. They’re just scanning for the next appropriate-looking place to click.
4. Size matters
The most frequent way people make quick inferences of importance is by size. Every site should have a hierarchy of importance expressed through the size of the font. Your category menu items should be larger than their subcategory items. Headlines should be larger than subheads, which are larger than the body text. It seems obvious, but you would be surprised how many sites regularly violate this common-sense rule.
5. Say what you mean
Especially in areas of navigation, it is of the utmost importance that you label items as they are, not in a way that you may think reinforces branding, says things cleverly, or in the case of many B2B sites, has a title that, “People in our industry understand.” Nothing will generate as much revenue as just saying what it is your users are clicking on. Remember: the less thought, the easier the site is to navigate. The easier your site is to navigate, the more people will be driven to your online goals.
As a subset to this, many companies love putting what we call, “Happy talk” all over their sites. You’ve seen it mostly at the top of the page. It starts with phrases like, “We hope you enjoy our site.” Happy talk is usually added to make people approving Web designs feel more comfortable about how the page presents itself.
And while happy talk makes sense in a conversation, it’s a big speed hump that stops users from staying on the path to a goal. Remember, every word in your site should add direct value to the process of getting to that goal. If you see happy talk in your site, be ruthless about weeding it out. You’ll be paving the way for your visitors to get right to the information they want. Nothing can welcome them more than that.
6. Mind your F’s and E’s
In a recent study by usability expert Jakob Nielsen, it was found through eye-tracking software that most all people look at a site starting at the top left and moving down the left side of the page, branching off in horizontal stripes to resemble the letter F most often, and an E second-most often. Follow that path on your site and see whether the information in those paths leads your users to the right places.
7. Squint it up
The single easiest test to improve the usability of your site is the squint test. Literally, bring the page up on your screen and squint at it until you can barely see it. What you notice most is what your visitors will typically be drawn to first.
8. Follow conventions
Web conventions have developed because, well, everyone understands them. Underlined text means it links to another page. Art that looks like button is a button. Clicking the company’s logo in the upper left will take you home. Diverting from convention is only going to make your visitors stop and think when they could be clicking.
9. Faster clicks beats longer pages
A lot of people hold on to the late 1990’s notion that it should only take between three and five clicks to get to the end goal of your navigation. Since then it has been proven that users really just want to scan and click their way to that goal. So if you can split up a three-click discourse into six more easily digestible clicks, it will probably make your visitor experience more effective.
10. Let them know where they’re going
How many times have you been surprised when you click on a link and get a pop-up window, or worse, a PDF file launches? If your links go anywhere besides a new page that replaces the one they’re on, let them know. Even just by putting a small [pdf] or icon next to links that create a behavior other than what convention dictates will make for a more pleasant experience.
There are many, many other factors that go into making sites more usable—which is why we specialize in usability, and include it as an integral part of our interactive process.
To get a free evaluation of your site—or even a more extensive written review by our usability pro (not so free) register now. We'll grade your site on 5 key elements of usability, and even throw in a free SEO report!
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