Planning a usable and more importantly a functional website: Stores three-step guide to success!
A website is like an information flow of content and images, with you as the provider of information and your visitors as receivers of that information. If you don't plan your website with this in mind right from the start, you could be in trouble and you might have to start all over again. Always remember that the consumer is king and everything you do must have them in mind.
Clicking away from your website has never been easier for Internet users and average drop rates are increasing daily due to the problem mentioned above. Search engine results are becoming better and better and Internet connection speeds faster and faster - finding one of your competitors' websites is now very quick and very easy.
Step 1. What are your visitors needs?
Your website has to provide information that fulfils the immediate needs of your site visitors. This is the fundamental principle behind usable website design, this is the most important rule that you need to follow every step of the way.
From experience website goals often differ from visitor needs what’s the solution?
Let’s take a sector for examples “travel”, Their immediate goal is to get visitors to contact them, take their details down etc.. and ultimately buy a ticket to a particular destination. Their site visitors are probably interested in getting quotes quickly without having to talk to someone, the immediate needs of the site visitors' are probably to answer questions like:
* Can I trust them?
* Are they the cheapest?
* Are there any hidden costs?
* Are these prices inclusive of all taxes?
Before the website begins to sell to its site visitors, it has to answer their questions quickly and informatively.
Step 2. Create an information flow
Now we've worked out what our site visitors' immediate needs are, we need to create an information flow, a path or guide that your site visitors will follow whilst on your site. The path will initially address their concerns and needs and will gradually take them towards completing your goal for them. This is where conversion focused SEO (search engine optimisation) comes to the party, when a visitor types tickets to London they don’t want tickets to New York!
To create this plan we'll need to:
* Identify the different groups of people who'll use your website
* Work out what you want each of these groups to achieve on your website
* Identify the information you'll need to provide for them to achieve this (and in what order)
* Work out what might put them off achieving this
* Identify the information you'll need to provide to prevent them being put off
From this, you'll be able to create a list of website pages and a rough idea of how they might flow together. You'll then be able to work out exactly what pages to include on the website and how to group these pages together.
Some users will need more information on a particular item, so you'll always need to provide them with a choice of continuing on, and make it clear that they can get more information. Going back to the website of the Travel company, an information flow that their site visitors might go on could look something like this:
* Homepage
* Flights
* Flights and travel
* Hotels
* Car hire
* Sightseeing and tours
* Package holidays
* Travel extras
* Contact us
The travel companies ultimate goal is for site visitors to contact them and request a booking. Wherever users are in this flow, they must be able to easily and immediately jump straight to the contact page at any point.
You've probably already seen this in action on websites. You arrive at the homepage and there are two or three prominent links (often in the form of boxes) telling you some basic information and requesting that you click on them to take you into some other part of the website. You go to that page on the website, read the information and then choose where to go next. And this keeps going on, until you either quit or complete the desired goal of the website.
Step 3. Usability testing
Once the website plan has been created, it's time to test it. This is the most important usability test that needs to be done and the one that will save you the most time and money in the long run.
If you don't do any usability testing you may discover that the structure of the website doesn't make sense once the website's up and running and again its back to the drawing board. This can and has happened and it leaves you with two choices: a redesign or a new website - neither are attractive options, and will be costly.
The most common objections to doing usability testing are:
* It's too expensive!
* It'll take too much time!
* I don't know how to do it!
And if that’s the case then its time to find a new profession. Usability testing can be expensive, but if you know what you want to achieve then it’s incredibly cheap, quick, informal and easy to do. You just need to show five people the plan/site map of the website and ask them:
* What's the point of this website?
* If you were on this homepage, where you would click? And where after that?
* Is it what you need?
That's it! As long as these five people roughly fit into your user profile everything should be fine. It's been shown that using five people for a usability test will uncover 85% of the usability issues of the website.
That’s it!! Stay tuned for our next insight into the world of website development.