10 Ways to Make Your Website More User Friendly

ADVERTISEMENT

One of the biggest problems with many websites is that they are simply just not user friendly. Taking the time to experiment and make changes not only can make your website more user friendly, but can also bring you better results as well for attracting visitors and making the site a profitable investment.

Long term readers of Upstart Agent have likely noticed that I experiment quite a bit when it comes to the design and layout of this site. This is because I have learned through experience that not all site designs are equal, and I have also learned that just because a site looks pretty does it mean that it will bring your readers or yourself any value. While being obsessive or constantly changing your site design is probably not productive, taking some time each month to carefully analyze your traffic and how this traffic interacts with your site can bring drastic improvement.

If you want to improve the usability of your blog or website, here are some tips:

1. Start With SEO: If you don’t have good SEO, you will not rank well in search engines. If you don’t rank well in search engines, you are missing out on a lot of potential users and traffic to your site! You could have the most functional, award winning site design – but if nobody comes then it won’t matter.

2. Reduce Your Categories: I have seen blogs that have over 25 different categories to choose from. While it seems like categories at first would make it easier to find what you are looking for, it can actually make it more difficult. I don’t want to read through 25 different topics to find the topic I’m interested in – which means likely I am going to ignore a long list of categories. This means not only can I not find related topics I’m interested in, but you’ve got a useless list of categories taking up valuable website real estate that could be utilized more effectively.

3. Check Links: This is something that becomes increasingly difficult to do if your site becomes very big and ages naturally. However, it is important to do because you never know where your visitors will land. When you have broken links not only does is frustrate the person visiting your site, but it also reflects poorly on yourself. Registering your site with Google Webmaster Tools and other similiar sites will help ensure that you don’t have any dead or broken links hiding around.

4. Inspect Your Traffic: Most free tracking programs such as Google Analytics and Gostats offer some important insight on what the visitors are doing when they visit your site. You can see what landing pages they come into contact with, what paths they take, what makes them leave, etc. Looking at bounce rates can help you decide if visitors find value in what you provide or if they are so turned off they immediately hit the back button on their browser.

5. Eliminate Pop-Ups & Other Distractions: One of my latest biggest pet peeves is annoying boxes that show up when I’m in the middle of reading an article asking me if I’d like to subscribe. Why in the world would I subscribe to a site that I can’t even read? Flash intros and splash pages are another thing worth getting rid of – they don’t serve any purpose.

6. Test it in Other Browsers: Just because a site looks good in Internet Explorer does it mean it will look good in Firefox or Safari. While your stats will be able to tell you what browser your users are using the most, it’s best to make sure it works in all browsers.

7. Make it Easy For People to Contact You: You should make it easy for people to contact you and encourage it. Having a comments box enabled if you are writing a blog is one way to get feedback. You should also have a contact page that is easy to find. As a real estate agent, the goal of your site is to get potential prospects to call you – so be sure you have your phone number highly visible as well as a way for them to send you non-confrontational emails with questions.

8. Make Lists: We live in a fast paced world. Most people who read articles on the internet or are looking for information are not going to read 12 paragraphs, especially if they are in a hurry. Instead of writing an about me page in paragraph style, write lists of your experience, what you can offer if they hire you, etc.

9. Think About What Your Users Need: When you want to attract potential clients with a website, you really have to consider their needs. Do they need to find a house? Can they search your listings easily? If they need to sell a house, do you have information for them that is easy to find?

10. Reduce Load Time: There is nothing worse than waiting for a page to load and show up. There are many sites that will check how fast your site loads. If you are having problems with speed, you can do many things such as changing the size of graphics and images, reducing the amount of php functions and database calls, and eliminating scripts. A slow loading site will also make people quickly leave the site.

Making your site more user friendly and increasing the usability will make it much more likely for them to find your site useful. And you’ll find that your site when catered to usability will also help you attract more visitors and business.

What are your thoughts? What makes a site user friendly to you? Share your ideas in the comments below!