Is Your Web Design Making Your Website Unusable?
Whether you are working with a web design company or creating your website yourself, your website has to not only look good but it also has to be fully functional and even effective. Even the most beautiful website will not get much traffic if an audience cannot figure out how to find information or content on the site. To figure out whether your web design is making your website unusable, ask:
1) What are the visuals like? If your graphics and photos overlap with your words, your viewers are going to have a hard time reading your content. Save watermarks for your print materials. Make your content clear and clutter-free.
2) Is your website simple enough? If your website is too busy with graphics, animation, and color, it will be hard to read. A simple, clean design is always best. One good test is to remove each item on your web site, one by one – do you miss each item? You may find that you can get rid of much of your website and actually improve your site in doing so.
3) What are the distractions on your website? On each page of your site, ask yourself where your eye is drawn first. If that item does not actively promote your company or service, it is a distraction. Tone it down or get rid of it.
4) What is your navigation like? Is your navigation menu direct, clear, and easy to use? Do you have easy-to-find links to the pages your readers are most interested in? Does your navigation menu or navigation bar look the same on each page? Test your navigation system by asking your readers what they think. Tweak the navigation until it works well. Of course, any broken links in your navigation menu (or anywhere else) need to be fixed at once.
5) Are you including the content you should be including? You should only look one place for your content – your readers. What do they want to see and read? That should be your only consideration when deciding what to include on your site.
6) Do you try to do too much? Your website should have one aim. Your website should be there to inform clients about your company, to get clients to come to your offices, or to get customers to order your products or services online. If you try to do all three with one site, you will just confuse readers. Pick one goal for your website. If you want to achieve more than one goal, consider setting up more than one site.