7 Ways to Instantly Make Your Website More User-Friendly

With more and more people preferring to conduct business exclusively online, a user-friendly website isn’t just desirable, it’s required if you want to be successful. These seven tips will help you instantly make your website user-friendly so you can get more visitors and turn your website into a sales generator.

Make your site responsive

With more than half of online searches coming from mobile devices, your site must be mobile-friendly. A responsive website gives every user a flawless online experience whether they’re viewing your site from a desktop, tablet or mobile device. You can quickly check your web responsiveness by navigating through all the pages on your site using various mobile devices (mobile smartphones, tablets, laptops), and browser providers (ex. Opera, Firefox, Safari, Chrome). If your website layout doesn’t translate seamlessly across all devices and providers, you may want to reach out to your web development team to fix the issue as soon as possible. For those not familiar with the notion of a responsive interface, there are many resources on the web that can bring you up to speed, but here is one takeaway for you to keep – if your website is not mobile responsive, you are significantly missing out on your audience engagement.

Place your logo on the top left

Your website absolutely must have your logo on it! Research shows the top left is the best place for your logo because this is where people’s eyes go first. With time, this placement evolved into the idea of static site navigation, helping users refer back to the homepage by clicking the top left corner of the screen. When the logo is shifted away from this preferred location, the effect is significant on user experience. Moving the logo to the opposite side of the page can challenge your customers’ ability to recall your brand. If you don’t have your logo clearly displayed on your website, not only are you missing a prime branding opportunity, but you could also be confusing visitors who may think they’ve stumbled upon the wrong company’s website.

Include your contact information

If there’s one thing your website needs, it’s your logo. But if there are two things your website needs, it’s your logo AND your contact information. Without your contact information easily accessible on your website, you could be missing out on a lot of potential business. People are not going to work very hard to find this, so make sure it’s in an obvious place on your website.

The more information you include – the better because it allows people to contact you in whichever way is most convenient for them. A phone number, email address, and business address will usually do the trick, but it doesn’t hurt to also include your hours of operation, so people know when they can reach you.

Don’t make your customers hunt you down

As a continuation of the previous point, you want to make your website as easy for your customers to navigate as possible. The more digitally dependent people become, the less they like having to do something as manual as picking up a phone call. Most of your visitors’ questions will be about your offering, which should be clearly displayed on your site. However, if they want to dive deeper into your brand and learn more about your company culture, mission statement and even recent news and developments, you should make that information simple to locate. You can cut your customers’ time in half by adding a Q&A page or putting a direct call-to-action on one of your pages, urging them to reach out directly at a product, form, or email address.

Accept online orders

If you are in the business of providing products and services to your customers, you should already be utilizing the wonderful benefits of e-commerce. Online shopping is a way of life now. People don’t like to be limited by store hours or location and don’t want to be bothered to have to go somewhere or call someone to place an order. In case you’re still relying on the outdated, in-person method of selling, check in with your payment provider service and see if you can merge that platform with your website. This will allow your clients the freedom to do business whenever and wherever they want and expands your list of prospects to the entire World Wide Web!

Make your content easy to skim

People rarely read anything word for word, and they surely don’t spend precious hours of their day trying to decipher long paragraphs of text on a website. The key to getting your customers interested in your content is to provide it in a clear and concise manner, so your clients can easily read and understand what you are trying to convey. The best way to do this is to swap places with your readers and create pieces of solid content that can directly help your audience. You can do so by stripping your text to simplify the words, employing bulleted lists and dividing your value propositions into short paragraphs and subheaders. That way, your website visitors can easily skim your website for the information they’re looking for.

Include your social media icons

A strong social media presence is a must for businesses that want to be successful now and in the future. If you have active social media accounts, add them to your website to grow your following. Your web visitors will love being able to connect with you in this less formal environment and you can keep them up to date on specials, hot new products, and more via your social channels.

These are just a few of the ways you can instantly improve the usability of your website. Some other suggestions include improving your site’s navigation and speeding up your site’s load time. Remember, the more impressive your website is, the larger audience you’re going to attract.