10 Tips for Better Web Site Usability - and Profits!

Tips for Better Web Site Usability

Making a web site easy and convenient for visitors to use is a commonly overlooked key to selling more from it. The following tips can help you do just that...

1) A lesson for marketers is to make our web sites, products, etc., compatible with the largest possible number of users, including the most common browsers and computer systems. 

The vast majority of web surfers use Internet Explorer, with Netscape in distant second place. The most popular screen resolution is 800 x 600.

This also means avoiding or using extreme caution with newer technology that people with slower connections and older computer systems can't easily use. One exception may be if you cater to an especially high-tech target market.

2) Unless you have a good reason to deviate from defaulthyperlink colors, it's best not to. Typically, blue links have not been visited, and purple links have. Other non-link text 

colored blue or purple may confuse visitors by making them think they are links.

3) A common pet peeve among surfers is slow-loading web pages.When using images on your pages, use width and height attributes in the HTML code to specify image sizes. Browsers can then allocate proper space for images and the text can start loading (giving visitors something to view) while images load.

4) Make your web pages load faster by minimizing the number of graphics you use, as well as by optimizing their file sizes.

5) Visitors typically scan web pages, rather than read them word for word. Keeping this in mind, use descriptive headlines and subheads, write concisely, and make important points stand out by highlighting them or using different colored text.

6) Certain bright colors such as red and yellow cause more strain on the human eye than others. Use such colors sparingly on your site if you want to encourage visitors to stay on your site longer. Otherwise, eye strain may cause them to leave prematurely.

7) Since visitors typically scan web pages, hyperlinks within the text of a web page should be relatively short (consisting of few words), yet very descriptive of where they lead to.

8) Two reasons to use the ALT attribute in the HTML code of your web pages: A) It can be used to slightly improve search engine ranking. B) It can tell the visually impaired (or those who surf with graphics turned of in their browsers) what the image is.

9) How many clicks does it take to get to your online order form? Many webmasters have found that the fewer clicks required, the better. In other words, the easier you make it to buy from you, the more likely people will.

10) Beware of common problems with using frames on a web site: A) A large percentage of surfers dislike them. B) They can be confusing and awkward for users. C) It's tricky to get the HTML just right. D) Search engines have problems indexing past the home page.

About the Author 

Marty Foley