A usable website is a quality website. Basically, a website must be EASY TO USE and hold the user’s attention or they will look elsewhere! One of our design objectives is to always build ‘user friendly’, intuitive websites.
Some of the useful features we build into ALL our dynamic websites include:
Easy to follow Menus
We will design a menu system that suits your particular requirements. The main menu can be at the top of the page or down the side of the page. We tailor the menu to your requirements.
Bread Crumbs
Some websites have large menus, each holding many other options. We always place page ’Bread Crumbs’ on the top of each page so that the user knows which pages they have visited, to get to the current page. Great for large websites.
You can also click on a page heading in the ’Bread Crumbs’ to go directly to that page.
Site Search
All our websites include a ’site search’ facility which lets your users search for text anywhere within your website.
The standard Site Search page will then be displayed...
An option for larger sites is to incorporate the Google Search engine into your website (additional costs apply).
Site Maps
All our websites also include a ’site map’ which details the site’s entire menu structure on a single page. Great for quickly finding a specific page.
Click on the Site map icon found at the right of the ’Bread Crumbs’.
The Site Map page will then be displayed...
Click here to try the Site Map.
Take me Home!
The most important page in your website. The Home page is the main entry point, a site summary and a starting point for your website. Users must be able to get back to the home page easily. Some web designers make this difficult but we make it easy with plenty of options to find Home quickly and conveniently.
Click on the company logo or website banner.
Click on Home in the breadcrumbs.
Click on Home in footer menu.
or click on Home in main menu or site map (as seen above).
Good Design
Some of our other usability design principles include:
- Making allowances in the website design for the different user screen resolutions. This reduces excessive page ‘scrolling’.
- Avoiding coding errors and ‘dead links’ sounds obvious but in reality, quiet common.
- Providing easy-to-access help and support to users when needed.
- Using a language familiar to the intended target user. We like to use a language that suits the purpose of the website, be it technical, youth and entertainment, educational or commercial.
- Using Web 2.0 features like AJAX (as used by Google and Facebook) to provide a more intuitive, user driven interface.