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Usability can make or break a web product, HipMunk, a flight search engine is one of the best usability example i can quote here which thrives on it. So what are the basic aspects of usability -

Navigation
Do users find your site easy and simple to navigate? Most owners tends to develop the website on their needs which meets their requirements, that’s a very common mistake. You may be highly comfortable in navigating your site, does new visitor also find it easy to navigate?

Take time to detach yourself and imagine how a newcomer would be  trying to navigate your site.  Ask someone who’s not familiar with your site to find specific information. Get them to think aloud as they do this, so that you can see where confusions arise and why. Difficulty in navigation is one sure way to drive visitors away and hand them over to another, friendlier, competitor website.

Add a sitemap
A sitemap is a navigational tool that also helps put your site high on the list of search engine rankings. Guide visitors in a tour through the site and teach them how to get from one point to the next with the use of this visual aid. Visual aids support navigation and are a great way to bring users directly to the page where the merchandise is chosen and on to the next to complete the purchase.

Excessive Adverts

Too many adverts is big turn off than a lead generating feature. It give pages a cluttered look which may discourage visitors who want a clean and structured presentation.

Also, too many adverts leaves the user the with an impression that the site owner cares more about making money than providing a useful online service, and create a bad user experience.

Ask yourself  if your website provides credible information/solve the critical pain point  for visitors to act upon your calls to action to buy.

Browser Compatibility

Users prefer to browse on different browsers through various devices. So your website must be capable of accommodating the mainstream browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari  Thus, after designing your site, put it through a trial navigation run and use all the functions that would normally be done by clients of each browser type.

Check for problems with pages loading or operating properly and see if visuals, graphics, animations and links function accordingly.

-Marina, vcBytes.com

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for measuring website usability and the user experience.

Before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data – the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

See Page Views not Hits

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 10 graphics on it, the server records this as 10 “hits”, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits overestimate website traffic. Page views are a better reflection of the number of eyes that gazed on your content.

Are there Enough Visitors to Create Meaningful Data-Sets

The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.  The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

Why People Leave Quickly, assess it

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

When Do Visitors Click Out of Your Site

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice an exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

Do Visitors Type in Your URL?

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivations. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Marina, vcBytes.com

When you are brainstorming how to make your website better, it is always a good idea to make sure your site conveys loudly the site name, what the site is for and what the user should do first.

If you are just worried and concentrating on content, colour schemes, coding, you are heading for trouble since user won’t understand what you’re trying to tell them.

Three main questions that a user must find answers to in the first 30 seconds of viewing a site are:

1. Who are you?
2. What do you do?
3. What next i should to?

If these questions are not satisfactorily answered in thirty seconds or less, a website rethink should be done pronto.

Let’s look at these “how to make a website” questions in detail

Who are you?

Eyemapping studies have shown that upon opening a website for the first time, users eyes automatically go to the top left area of the site. This explains why good web developers place the company’s logo in this place. Users immediately spot the logo and this helps in building on brand awareness and orientation.

What do you do?

This question is a little bit more difficult than the first, especially for companies who have several different products or services or those that have internal uncertainties in defining what they do. If the target audience comes from varied classes and backgrounds, the challenge gets even bigger. Users want to be told what you are offering rather than trying to figure out what your tagline or sales pitch means. Simply stating what you do is the best way to manage this. Putting an image of your product  or service (range) on the homepage lets the user know right away what you are selling.

What next I should do?

Users generally don’t linger on the homepage. They want to go to the product descriptions, the entertainment, service or how to contact the site owner. A broad target audience will have different requirements. Address this complexity with calls to action such as: Contact Us for a Free Evaluation, so that each customer is handled personally. A good designer should be adept in attracting the user’s eyes to your calls-to-action.

If your website passes the thirty second rule, good for you! You have a web site that is high in usability. Otherwise, it’s time to rethink your design and revisit your web strategy.

If you concentrate on creating the right rapport with your customers rather than focusing on the techincal aspects of “how to make a website”, you will get a much better end result.

Marina, vcBytes.com