Usability can be directly linked to your website’s success. This is due largely because the usability of your website affects your visitors’ perception and their effectiveness when they are on your site.

Listed below are 10 usability facts that will help your website succeed.

10 Website Usability Facts You Need

1. Don’t make a visitor think, the first law of usability. The visitor should be able to understand the site, page, or application without thinking what they are being asked to do.
2. Don’t make your visitor feel stupid if there is an error. Design the website functions to be error free but when errors happen design useful messages that help the visitor correct the mistake and move on.
3. Don’t place important information in images. Visitors will ignore anything that looks like a banner even if it isn’t an advertisement.
4. Visitors to your site are looking for trigger words that they think will get them closer to completing their task. Websites with clear labels and navigation options help drive the visitors forward in their effort to task completion.
5. Remember, visitors don’t read the pages of your website they scan trying to be as efficient as possible. Think about your own reading patterns when arriving on a site your eyes immediately start bouncing around the page looking for your trigger. Don’t rely heavily on text and instructions to make something understandable.
6. Visitors make bad choices, click the wrong link, select the wrong product, skip the wrong field, etc. Make sure your site is forgiving when these bad choices happen. Help the visitor get back on track building their confidence.
7. Keep your website’s navigation consistent on each page. This is one of the most important usability factors that can be offered to your visitors.
8. The homepage is not your website’s only entry page. Your site needs to make it clear to visitors which page they’ve landed on and its relation to the rest of the site.
9. Keep your information short and in small digestible chunks. Since visitors are skimming your site use short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and subheadings to make a page easier to scan.

And finally.

10. Making your website usable to visitors will have a positive impact on your business and will lead to a larger Return on Investment. Estimates on ROI impacts have been as high as 10 fold.

Contact me if you’re interesting in learning more about usability design, best practices, or how usability can increase your ROI.