Effective Web Design Usability
Principles
by Sam Mah
1. Getting to know about audience members
You want a site that has personality and quality content
based on your audience taste. You have to understand their
color preferences, technical skills and any prevalence
of special needs.
2. Make the interface simple and obvious
The more obvious the interface is, the less frustration
the site visitor has to guess about how your site works.
You want the audience to concentrate on the content, not
the interface.
3. Readability
Make paragraph easy to read. Don't use small text for
font size.
4. Make your page fast loading
Reduce the waiting time is a must if your page over 20KB.
5. Avoid hidden (rollover to reveal) navigation
It makes for a very clean design if all your navigation
is hidden, but it may also mean that people won't know
where to click to go somewhere.
6. Get user feedback
Find out what works and what doesn't.
7. Study site visitor performance
How long does it take to performance a given task? The
time it takes to do thing has got to be reasonable. If
it's not reasonable, improve user interaction wherever
possible.
8. Help section (site map, 404)
When site visitors make a mistake try to provide many
ways to help them out of it.
9. Test early and test often
Test your code for bugs on web browsers. Test the interface
for usability. Ask your friends and colleagues for in
depth and valuable feedback.
Please don't think that the website usability techniques
discussed above are the be all and end all of web usability
as they are not.
Sam H Mah is a search
engine optimization website designer who provides
web standard compliant website for small and corporate
clients around Canada and the world. Request a
FREE usability / SEO website critique.
