How to Make a Website User-Friendly

If you often find yourself asking ‘Why is my traffic so low?’ and ‘What is wrong with my website?’, this article is for you. Sometimes, even if your website has an attractive design and all the functions are working fine, it’s still not enough to win you loyal users and clients. But that’s where the aspect of user-friendliness comes into play.

You can build a website that users will be eager to stay on right now by learning these simple secrets.

The Importance of Usability

One might ask: ‘Why is it so important for a website to be user-friendly?’. The answer is rather simple — only a user-friendly website can retain its user base. In our day and age, when there are millions and millions of websites on the Internet, it is crucial that your website, no matter what kind of purpose it serves, is designed with users’ comfort in mind. If its loading speed is too slow, if your website is a bit too low in the search rankings, if users can’t instantly find what they are looking for — they will leave. And the worst part is not just that they are just leaving, it is that they are going to seek your competitors instead. They will look for a website that is designed better and is easier to navigate.

While spending time on making your website user-friendly, you are investing in users’ trust. Nowadays it takes a couple of seconds for a person to scan through the homepage of a website and decide whether they are staying or not. An ordinary user won’t even notice that a website is friendly, but will still intuitively decide to stay.

Creating a user-friendly environment on your website is equally important, no matter if you hold an online store, a landing page or simply your personal website. In any case, you want people to keep using it, to buy your products, to read your articles, to hire you, right?

Choosing the Right Tools

A lot of important factors regarding the website’s usability come from both your skills and the tools you use. Fortunately, even if you don’t have a lot of experience with UX (User Experience), there is software that’s meant to help you out. Namely, there are CMS platforms and website builders.

CMS (Content Management Systems)

Examples of this software include WordPress and Joomla. Essentially, a CMS is a base-kit for creating all kinds of websites, from e-commerce to personal pages. CMS are famous for their possibilities for website customization. They are also free on the baseline — you don’t have to pay for a subscription to start building a website. However, while CMS provide all the tools and often even offers pre-made templates, they still require a user to know at least a little bit of coding and HTML.

The truth is, CMS only have the basics — you’ll need to buy a domain and hosting services separately, which might turn out not to be so free in the end. CMS are still effective, but their learning curve is undeniable, so it’s difficult to recommend them for complete beginners.

Website builders

The website builders’ mission is to prove that anyone can build a website in minimal time when provided with all the instruments. Creating a website with website builders is easy as pie — you drag & drop pre-made blocks and sections, add places for images and text, and that’s basically it. No need to learn coding or get used to complicated software.

You won’t even have to start from scratch. Website builders offer their users many templates that meet every need. Site.pro has templates for online businesses, education websites, travel blogs, landing pages and even more. And in case you’re completely out of ideas for your website’s design — you can always ask the AI to create a website for you.

Just visit the ‘AI Website Generator’ page, write down everything you want your website to be in the text field, wait a minute — and you’ll get a custom-made website. Save it to make adjustments and add your unique content to it later.

The main advantage that website builders provide over the other tools is that a website created in a builder is responsive from the get-go. It means that it will automatically adapt to different screens without glitching. Apart from that, website builders, such as Site.pro, have built-in features for quick and easy SEO optimization, including generating SEO titles, meta-descriptions and keywords with AI.

The prices for website builders may range, but there are free plans and trial periods to test everything out. Site.pro has a free plan that comes with a mailbox and a custom domain, and its prices are the lowest on the market — $1,20/year.

Intuitive Navigation

You need to make sure that your users’ journey is as straightforward as possible. For that, you have to make a good navigation system.

  • Keep your menu short and neat if possible. Every case is unique, but even large marketplaces nowadays tend to minimize the amount of links in their menus. There is a golden rule: try not to include more than 7 links in your top horizontal menu. If you’re not sure how to organize your menus, consider looking for references on other websites with similar themes. Vertical menus are often used by e-commerce platforms, while horizontal ones are more multi-purpose.
  • Always add a footer menu at the bottom of your website. It’s a small detail, but if you include all relevant links and contacts there, it will be much easier for users to navigate.
  • Remember: the less total screens a user has to go through to find something — the better.
  • User-friendly URLs are also a big part of navigation. Make your links simple, like, for example, ‘mysite.xyz/blog/recipes-for-cookies/’. It is good both for your visitors and SEO. Separate words with hyphens, stick to naming categories correctly, and you’re good to go.

Accessibility

It’s possible that you didn’t notice it before, but most successful websites have alternative text attached to images. Alt text has two main purposes:

  • Making a website more accessible to people with limited vision capabilities. They often use software that allows them to read text aloud, and when images are described through alt text, it is easier to navigate the website.
  • Making a website usable even with a slow Internet connection. Sometimes, when there are issues on the client’s end, images simply won’t load in. In that case, if you add alt text, it will be displayed instead of an image. It is convenient and makes it so users still understand the content of images.
  • Improving SEO. Search engines perceive alt text, just like keywords and meta-titles. Adding alt text will help you rank higher.

To add alternative text to your images in Site.pro’s website builder, simply click on an image and write down the text in the text field in the right menu.

Understandable Call-to-Action

If you want your users to do something — you should tell them! Give simple forms and direct instructions, make the text on your buttons clear. It might be obvious for you, but users see your website for the first time. By giving them a call-to-action you will make it so much easier to find a way to go on a specific page, contact you or buy something on your website. It’s simple, just name your buttons properly!

  • ‘Add to cart’;
  • ‘Register’;
  • ‘Go next’
  • ‘Contact us’;
  • ‘Subscribe’, etc.

If you’re not sure whether your call-to-action is clear enough – it’s time to run another UX test! Take notes and improve your text where users get stuck and confused.

Pro tip: choose someone for testing who isn’t familiar with your website. It can be a colleague, a friend or even a family member.

Optimize for Mobile

More than half of your traffic will come from mobile users, so don’t neglect them. For the same reason, your website’s design should be simple, so elements would easily adapt to mobile and load in fast. That’s why it’s not the best idea to add heavy videos and GIFs that load in automatically or big chunks of text that will be difficult to read from a small screen.

With Site.pro, websites created in the builder are already adapted for mobile devices. However, you should always check it yourself. If your website doesn’t appear as intended on mobile, it can be easily fixed!

Here’s how to do that:

  • Go to ‘Page structure’;
  • Check all the elements with ‘Horizontal’ and ‘Vertical’ layouts;
  • Change height and width to ‘100%’ or ‘auto’;
  • Turn off ‘Min’ and ‘Max’ checkboxes;
  • Now your website will adapt to different screens automatically.

Conclusion

You should never underestimate user-friendliness when building a website. The neat design and intuitive interface can become your advantages over your competitors regardless of your field. Win the trust of your visitors by making your website responsive and well-organized. It surely requires a bit of effort, but will prove to be a worthwhile time investment.