The design of your website will greatly how visitors use your website. Confusion will cause your visitors to leave resulting in lost engagement or lost sales.

You have a golden opportunity with every visitor that comes to your website. To capitalize on each and every opportunity take a critical look at your website and ask yourself some key questions.

Is it easy for visitors to navigate your site? The navigation on your site should clearly indicate to your visitors where they are, what they can do and where they can go.

If you are registering users or taking online orders is your process smooth and logical? Gather only the most needed information. This should only be the information needed to complete the transaction. For example, don’t ask for my birthday just so you have it. Reduce ‘friction points’ – the fewer the better.

Is critical information not being seen by your visitors? Jacob Nielsen is a leading authority on website usability and recently reported that visitors are conditioned to overlook information that looks too much like banner advertising. Over-designing the textual information on your website will cause visitors to ignore it. Be considerate about how you’re designing your information.

Does your site speak in jargon and buzzwords? Visitors do not have the time or desire to learn your business lingo. Make it a point to write in terms your visitors are familiar with. The language should be simple to understand.

Are you consistent throughout the site? Consistency is important to eliminate user confusion. The terminology being used to describe a process, for example, should remain the same throughout the site. When linking to a page make sure the link and the title of the page being linked to match. The same color and style should be used for all text links.

Does your site design provide clarity? While the design of your website is important it shouldn’t get in the way of completing a task. Keep your site clean and reduce the amount of visual clutter. Make use of white space to break up information and provide your visitors with visual resting places.

By thoroughly looking at your website and asking critical questions you can greatly affect your visitors experience with your website.