How do you make your website user-friendly? A good website, which serves as your company’s front door, is the most crucial marketing component. A “decent” website won’t cut it when it comes to engaging visitors who will become brand advocates. What you actually require is a top-notch website. This article will give you an overview of how do you make your website user-friendly. Keep reading.
Globally, almost 500,000 new websites are made every day. Additionally, the great majority of them are “inaccessible,” preventing the one billion handicapped persons in the globe (or 15% of the population) from having a simple internet experience.
In-depth analysis reveals that 430 million individuals “need rehabilitation to address their ‘disabling’ hearing loss,” according to the WHO. And it’s a rising problem; by 2050, that number is anticipated to reach 700 million.
If all you need is a straightforward, off-the-shelf website that appears professional enough to give your firm a basic start, there are thousands of pre-made templates and themes that make constructing a website simple. However, you need a website that is as distinctive as you are if you want to stand out in today’s competitive market.
How do you make your website user friendly?
Leaving morality aside, developing an accessible (disability-friendly) website may improve your entire brand identity and foster long-term brand trust.
If we approach this from a purely business standpoint, companies with inaccessible websites are underutilizing their market potential.
Let’s use the USA as an illustration. There are approximately 54 million persons with disabilities residing in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This amounts to over $1 trillion in total income or more than $220 billion in consumer discretionary purchasing power.
1. New, High-Quality Content
Be brief, intriguing, and original. Avoid acronyms, business speak, and jargon; instead, use language that your audience can understand. Justify your “Why.” Because visitors have short attention spans, be precise, relevant, and update frequently.
Spell properly. (A few pointers.) The addition of new material through blogs and social media updates encourages repeat visits and benefits the SEO strategy. Yes, some investment is necessary to keep things interesting. You cannot live without it, no.
2. Build a good design team
People with disabilities should be included in the design process. This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you want to build a website that is accessible to people with disabilities, you must interact with the community and find out the challenges they have while using your site.
Knowing your users’ problems will help you create a website that doesn’t suffer from those problems.
Try to involve persons with disabilities on your marketing team or in the process after you’ve reached the website creation stage. They will be able to let you know what they require, assist you in creating sensible plans, and iron out any possible problems before they occur.
3. Accessible location and contact information
Your audience won’t go looking for you. Make it simple to participate by providing a variety of contact options, such as a contact form that is simple to use, social media, email, and phone.
An added benefit is a Google map. Above all, make sure that this information is easily accessible on a contact page that is simple to discover, if not on all of your website’s pages.
4. Transcribing and creating subtitles
Subtitles are a huge benefit to those with hearing impairments, therefore if you wish to incorporate video in your online material, we strongly suggest including them.
For those who have ADHD, subtitles are also beneficial since they offer them something to concentrate on and make it simpler for them to grasp and enjoy.
If you’re creating your own videos, please be sure to add subtitles before you publish them to your website. Sites like YouTube already offer features that allow users to automatically add subtitles to their videos.
Another excellent technique to guarantee that everyone can appreciate your website and its content is to offer transcripts and closed captioning for your videos.
5. Excellently Designed and Practical
Your website serves as a reflection of your business, your goods and services, and ultimately your brand. Therefore, it’s crucial to present yourself in a polished and professional manner. Let your message stand out with white space, clear layouts, and high-quality images and graphics. (See instances.)
The website must function swiftly, accurately, and as intended. Build to web standards, carefully check for typos, and run frequent speed and functionality tests.
Because each page might be a potential customer’s first or last impression, it should always be quick and easy to use. Your visitors will become annoyed by places that are broken, sluggish, or poorly built, which will prompt them to depart.
6. Color Scheme
Create an accessible layout for your website first and foremost, but an intuitive layout is useless if you’re utilizing the wrong colors. For instance, text may be hard to recognize due to clashing colors.
Choosing the ideal color scheme might be challenging. The most prevalent kind of color vision deficit (CVD), known as “red/green color blindness,” affects around 8% of all males. So, wherever feasible, refrain from employing these hues.
Contrarily, employing several color schemes to organize your material might be highly helpful for those who struggle with learning.
When it comes to picking colors, it’s important about striking the right balance, so be careful not to pick colors that are too loud. For instance, it may be challenging for users to discern between vivid blue, yellow, and green combined. Whitespace can aid users in distinguishing between distinct text sections.
7. Distinct calls to action
Visitors will do nothing if your website doesn’t ask them to. What does your website aim to achieve? Are visitors aware of this goal?
Even educational websites encourage users to read and share content, subscribe to mailing lists, follow the business on social media, download toolkits, and more. Add a request to each page.
8. Make Links Detailed
The “click here” button may seem like a simple option when adding links to your website, but it’s actually quite useless for those who use screen readers. Your website will be scanned by screen readers for links, and if your links are too broad, they might not be able to read them.
In light of this, it is far more advantageous to create a descriptive link that will aid readers in understanding the information on the next page.
Instead of writing “to discover more about our employment possibilities, go here,” it is preferable to write “to learn more about our job opportunities, check out Adapt’s careers website.”
Your links will shine out for persons who are blind or visually impaired if you underline them. To make sure the link stands out, you may also add a color difference between the link and the backdrop of the webpage.
Many websites often include links that are very small, which is not useful for people who have vision problems or mobility issues. To make it as easy as possible for users to click on your links, always make sure your links have a broad range.
9. Apply Alt Tags
Almost all websites make use of images in some capacity. Alt tags are the text that appears when you hover your mouse pointer over a picture.
These handy tiny tags are useful for anyone who has to utilize a screen reader, a program that reads website content out loud, due to visual impairment.
By using these tags, you may add more information to your website, but you should watch out that the descriptions are true to your brand’s essence.
For instance, if the image depicts an object, we advise using a few words to explain it. If it’s a photo of a person, you can also, if you think it’s acceptable, provide the individual’s name and a brief description.
10. Make it simple to Use
Always rushing around our website visitors. Avoid making people strive to obtain information. User Experience (UX) is crucial to ensuring that visitors utilize, comprehend, and remain on your website. Make rational, obvious navigation with a distinct hierarchy. Apply uniform layouts and visual cues to the site’s operation.
Your website should please both “searchers,” who are seeking a specific item, and “browsers,” who are only browsing.
By using onsite search to assist consumers in completing their activities efficiently, you can keep them interested by recommending relevant material and reducing dead ends.
11. Search and the Social Buttons
Building a user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing website is insufficient. It must generate traffic. Otherwise, the time spent on design, user experience, and content creation would be in vain. Here is a handful to get you started as there are hundreds of rules and recommendations for successful search engine optimization:
- Use page names, meta descriptions, and alt text for all of your pages and images.
- Adapt the information on your website to the keywords that actual users type in.
- Use the right keywords in your content and links.
- Layout your page using Cascading Style Sheets to avoid cluttered HTML.
12. Suitable for Mobile
There are no longer any justifications; your website must be user-friendly and look beautiful across all platforms. You never know what kind of gadget your next visit will be using because the proliferation of mobile and tablet devices is not slowing down. Making your website mobile-friendly will enhance both your visitors’ experience and your SEO rankings.
13. Smooth navigation
You may assist users in navigating your website by following a few straightforward steps. Make sure your entire website is keyboard-friendly first; this will make it easier for people to access every section of your site.
When utilizing tabs, visual cues are crucial because they let visitors know where they are on each landing page. We suggest utilizing jump lists to break up content on pages with a lot of information into manageable chunks.
Your video material is a final step to take into account. Make sure your embedded videos don’t play automatically if you have any, as this might be problematic for screen reader users.
14. Make wise font selections
While utilizing non-standard fonts is not very practical for many consumers, fancy or unusual fonts may give a company identity or make websites appear more personable.
Serif fonts may be attractive, but those who have dyslexia or vision problems find it very challenging to read the text in them. Sans Serif fonts are highly recommended since they are considerably simpler to read and differentiate from pictures and colored backgrounds.
You must also take the font’s size into account in addition to the font’s style. We advise a minimum size of 14 pixels for a Sans Serif font and 16 pixels for a Serif typeface for simple readability.
Final thought
In addition to those with impairments, we also need to take into consideration an expanding demographic, namely the world’s aging population.
Your links will shine out for persons who are blind or visually impaired if you underline them. To make sure the link stands out, you may also add a color difference between the link and the backdrop of the webpage.
Many websites often include links that are very small, which is not useful for people who have vision problems or mobility issues. To make it as easy as possible for users to click on your links, always make sure your links have a broad range.
Natural aging symptoms include loss of fine motor abilities, the capacity to handle the cognitive load, and vision. Each of these may have a big impact on how older users engage with your website.
Consequently, while it may be in style to have ingeniously designed websites with vibrant colors and distinctive typefaces, doing so would mean turning away a sizable portion of the market. I hope you have learned how to make your website user-friendly, its time to apply.
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