Usability and User Friendly Interface
in Web Design

By Alex Garber 2005

Intro: what is usability optimization in design?

There are three basic ways of optimizing a commercial web design:

·        Optimization for search
·        Optimization for speed
·        Optimization for usability

While first two ways of optimisation are well known to designers, programmers and average clients, the third one is commonly neglected. The reason for such a negligence is a fact that absence of the usability most of the time can be rendered only by a visitor of the website. Visitor usially does not know as much about the featured product or service as you do, and have to find the necessary information quick and hassle-free. However if you worked on development of the website either as a designer or as site's owner, you will know, by definition, where to look for specific information and how the website works. Unfortunately it will not guarantee that a visitor and a potential user of the site will be on the same line with you on that matter.

User friendly interface is a way of organizing the information on the pages of Internet site in the manner that will ensure that a potential customer will locate the necessary information fast and easy. That can be accomplished by following simple guidelines, based on commonly accepted ways of organizing information that evolved during the history of the Internet and standard rules of psychology.

Keep the Objective in Mind

The following are some basic techniques that will help to ensure that the information you offer to the website’s visitor is organized in a pleasant and easy-to-use manner. However even before starting to organize it, you have to think, what is a main purpose of the website, what information matters more then other and what will help you to achieve the goals that made you to build the website at the first place. Only when you understand it well enough yourself, you will be ready to organize it so that a visitor will understand it too.

Location, Location and Location!

Web design, due to the scrollable nature of the pages and the conditioning of the Internet users, is based of the left-to-right and up-to-down information flow. This principle is different from the print design patterns, which has to have the most important information in the center and the upper right side of the page (for the left to right languages)

Information Importance Charts:

* BOLD numbers indicate the most important spots on the page
The darker shade - the less important spot.

** The charts based only on location, disregarding the influence of font sizes, colors, keywords and other means of design.

Size Does Matter …

Bigger is more important. This statement became to be such a common place that … it often being missed out. Always remember that links and text that serves the bigger purpose has to be emphasized with size. On the other hand it’s a very common mistake to underline unnecessary or less important statements, such as “welcome”, that has no real usability for the sites visitor or “company policy” which has the usable information, but far less important then, for instance, “services”.

On the other hand, there is a limit to size difference. The sizes of the links may vary from size 14 to 9 and the difference of more important text from less important shell not exceed 2 points. 

Say it With the Color

Always be extra-careful with the usage of colors. There are tons of books on psychological meanings of the colors. Using the wrong color or even the shade of color may make the visitor to get the wrong impression from the website and misread the message. For instance, red color commonly is used for news and specials. Using it for the section of site’s achieves may mislead the visitor.

Do not Distract Visitor from
Comprehending Your Site

Using low contrast between text and the background, bright multi-colored images behind the text or overdoing the optimization of the graphics so it will make text to be too small or pixilated may cause your text to be poorly readable and the information unusable. This may breach the very purpose of making the website. The result can be also caused by unnecessary and too intense animation, especially of the text, and extensive amount of unnecessary graphics.

Limit the Amount of Links

If you have a menu on the website that exceeds 6 uncategorized links, it means that the information is poorly organized. The most standard solutions are – to move some of the information one level down in the site’s structure or to break a raw list into the categories.

Example:

It’s not always easy to categorize the items of the list. But it is a must to do and it’s well worth the effort.

The other solution that sometimes helps is alphabetized links, separated by pages.

Do not be afraid to create another level of links on the site. It is for sure better to have the shorter paths, but logical organization of the information will be much more important then an extra click for an average site’s visitor, and will be rewarded by better site’s productivity.

Icons are NOT the Ultimate Solution

A website’s surfer is not a mind reader. Most of the time icons that are used on the Internet simply are not legible. Of course we are not talking about the “envelope”, “magnifying glass” or “question mark” icons. The symbols like these became so widely known and used that you can safely rely of surfer’s reaction upon seeing them, but the amount of the “user-safe” icons is very limited. On the other hand, “notepad with a pencil” icon was used in so many different meanings that using of something like this became totally worthless. Most of the time generating the set of your own icons is not worthy in general. Perfecting the text links and the accompanying graphics will be far more effective.

Standard Language and Keywords

Most of the sections you will have on the website can be found elsewhere on the Internet and already have more or less established way of naming them. In order to ensure visitors satisfaction, it not a good idea to go against the established ways of naming sections. For example, the department commonly known as “about us” or “company profile” shell not be named “here we are” or “intro to our great establishment”. However, there are always new trends and changes to the naming parts of the website. For instance, formerly known as a standard, section “Links” became to be a sign of amateur website and shell be replaced with “Recourses” or “Affiliates”

Interact with the user

Never forget that there is a person that will be reading your site: the more personal you get, the more customer satisfaction you will experience. Always try to refer to the reader, not to just put the general information. For example, instead of using “more >” link use “Read more >” instead “New” – “View new arrivals”. Starting the phrase with the verb makes a reader to feel that this website targeting him and intend to satisfy his needs, comparing to just listing irrelevant information.

Ask user questions like: “where would you like to go?” instead of “categories” on the drop down menu. Such questions will make a surfer to feel that his opinions are important for you and you are looking to help him to get what he need to go, not trying to lead him wherever he does not want to be.

Let the visitor to use the statements like “show ME the items” The customer will surely appreciate when you talking specially to him, but furthermore he will enjoy an ability to respond.

Bottom line: Don't hassle your client

It is always a good idea, while implementing something new to the site to see how it will reflect on customer satisfaction. There are various ways of making your website to be quite agrivating to use, starting from placing information in the pop-up window or making your customer to re-login every now and then without a reason. One of the best examples of creating an unpleasant expirence for a customer - making text, expected to be copy-ready (such as contact information, driving directions or office hours) to be a graphic or java-generated-copy-disabled text. Always think about you pleasant and unpleasant experiences while browsing the web and try to truly treat you customer as it were you. The reward will be - a success of your website.