Usability Matters

Usability of a website is usually determined by accessing any given website’s design, architecture and navigational functionalities. Having a user-friendly website not only makes it easy for the user to navigate through the website but also adds a value to the website that indeed is considered by the search engines. Design, information, navigation, content arrangement and functionality are few important factors that form the basis for a good and easily accessible website.

Design can be said to be the first and the foremost factor that can be visibly noticed by both users and the search engines. Even search engines prefer visiting websites that are easily accessible and simple to move around. There are in fact many simple untold rules like vertical and horizontal menu bars, blue underline for links, logo on the left corner and more. Though these are not rules that are written anywhere as a standard for designing websites, most of us prefer using these as the internet users are unconsciously conditioned to these arrangements and search for the specific buttons and images in specific locations that they are used to. Following these simple rules, actually help as it increases visibility in the website helping the users in reaching the page they are searching. This also helps users in moving freely within the website when they visit the sites next time. Sometimes they even remove the colors used, the layout and the arrangement of the menus and control buttons.

The information architecture also plays a vital role in here. It, of course, helps the users in finding the required information with ease and also helps the search engine spiders in locating the various pages. This is the concept based on which site maps are designed and made available in websites. The search engine spider finds this system of arranging the information more easily accessible and assures that all the web pages are crawled. This architecture should creatively be designed without confusing the users as a badly designed structure might take the user to the right places and try to retain them in the website without forcing the users to go out of the website thinking that the website does not have the information they are looking for.

The navigational system is also something very important, as these are the actual pathways that would guide the users to move around the website. This is one of the main factors that would help anyone in judging the websites accessibility. Other minor navigational rules like alt tags for images, links to move back and forth when in a web page, etc. help in making a website for easy to access. The functional keys and buttons that are used should also be more evident and helpful for the users. All these points would certainly help in building the likeness for the website. Moreover, attention to these little points would help in retaining the visitors for a long time in the website rather than making them go away frustrated.

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