5 Eye-opening Tips to Make Your Business Website User-friendly, Even on a Budget

Today, we offer five eye-opening tips to make your business website user-friendly, even on a budget. Why? Because when creating a website for your business, there are several factors you must consider (from both the aesthetic and usability perspectives) that can either make or break your website.

This concept is no new kid on the block. According to this quote from Mike Gualtieri (2009):

If your Website is sluggish, ugly, busy, frustrating, or boring, then it’s providing a poor user experience, and customers will likely go elsewhere to buy insurance, shop for couture, trade stocks, find a date, pay bills, watch videos, and do the myriad other things people do on the Web.

Even if you are not looking to spend a fortune on your business website, following the tips below will ensure that the final product makes you proud.

Let’s get you those five eye-opening tips without any further delay.

Tip #1 to make your business website user-friendly

Ensure your website loads in 5 seconds or less.

Have you ever tried viewing a website only to find that it takes 10 or 20 seconds to appear on your screen? Unless a friend recommended the site or you have some other burning desire to visit the site, you most likely gave up and moved on.

The first seconds are critical in terms of each visitor’s attention span. During that period, your site must load and allow the visitor to “get” what your site offers. Lengthy loading times will frustrate your visitors and send them running to your competitors’ websites.

Additional tip: if you want to show off a long flash presentation, try featuring it on a page other than the home page.

Tip #2 to make your business website user-friendly

Limit options in the top-level menu bar to only five links.

Your website must have a single purpose and a focused appearance. If your site tries to be all things to everyone, it will only bring value to a few visitors.

Base your website’s navigation on simplicity and focus, always. To make your business website user-friendly, you must not overwhelm your visitors with too many top-level menu items. Begin evoking a simple user experience with your home page and menu-bar options.

If you are determined your website requires more than five top-level menu options, include sub-menu options (only visible when users hover over your five main menu-bar options).

Example: Notice that ADRA Media uses exactly five top-level menu options and neatly nestles additional options below them.

Tip #3 to make your business website user-friendly

Provide a clearly- visible call to action (CTA).

Have you ever been inside an IKEA store? Their stores utilize a non-traditional layout that enables shoppers to look around freely. Yet, the design quickly merges from one section to another, ending at several cash registers lined with racks ready to fuel impulse buyers’ dreams.

Let this serve as a model for your website’s design: each page must state undeniably to your visitors what specific actions you want them to take. Do you want them to:

• Do you want them to contact you?
• Order your product or service?
• Add a comment to your blog post?
• Subscribe to your e-mail list?

Whatever you want them to do, make your CTA quickly identifiable (using both text and graphics is perfect) from anywhere on your website.

Pro Tip: Consider making a GLOBAL CTA that appears on each page of your website as we do here at ADRA Media with our sections that offer a no-cost consultation.

Tip #4 to make your business website user-friendly

Provide free and transparent access to additional options for help.

You do not want to lose visits, sales, etcetera because you neglected to provide visitors the chance to ask questions.

Like calls to action, you must make it clear to visitors (from anywhere on your site) that accessing help via phone, call back, e-mail, live chat, a user forum, or a knowledge base is simple.

Hint: Display your help options in a prioritized way tailored to anticipated visitors’ needs.

Tip #5 to make your business website user-friendly

Show consistency among all web-design elements.

The appearance and vibe visitors observe on your website comes from a combination of all its components:

• Examine even the tiniest details on your new website.
• Use appropriate colors and graphics, and pay attention to font size.
• Ensure your message is readable and makes sense.
• Only use images that look crisp and appealing.

Please Note: Items you think are minor might form the basis for whether someone chooses to stay on your site or hitch a ride via Google to a competitor’s website to do business.

Conclusion

Whether designing your site or hiring a professional designer, pay attention to these powerful, eye-opening tips, and you will have a winning website for your business.

We hope you’ve enjoyed these five tips to make your business website user-friendly, even on a budget. It is our goal to publish helpful content loaded with value.

In closing, we sincerely hope you will reach out to us if you are in the market for a new website for your business or have come to realize your existing website needs a facelift.

You can learn more about us here, so you’ll feel like you’re chatting with an old friend when we speak.

References

Gualtieri, M. (2009). Best practices in user experience (UX) design. Design Compelling User Experiences to Wow your Customers, 2.