Website usability is the main value of its logic, convenience, openness, and efficiency. While using a website with high usability, we can find all important information without problems, can quickly find required pages, and complete all the actions we need.

The better the usability, the more satisfied the visitors will be, and the more time they will spend on your website. It will encourage them to perform actions you need, such as buying your product.

Creating a website with high usability means predicting the behavior of the user and getting rid of irritating factors. This is why you need to think about the structure and navigation of your website and make the design smooth and consistent.

However, usability has its own common problems. They always repeat and reduce the comfort of users, but they are pretty simple to be fixed. In this article, we will tell you about these problems and, additionally, will help you explain why usability is important, what affects it, and how to check it using a simple usability test.

Text Overload

Maybe, you were really inspired when you were filling your website with text content. Or, maybe, you didn’t fully understand how to make your texts shorter. But when there is too much text, your visitors will not forgive you.

You need to keep only the most crucial points in your text. When choosing between adding a brand tone of voice or simplicity and understanding to your text, you should definitely select simplicity. The smooth process of content examination affects site usability and attracts visitors to perform actions.

Design Overload

The fewer elements you use for website decoration, the easier it will be to perceive your content. It improves usability. You need to choose between a balanced color scheme and create a set of only two main fonts. Design and usability are bonded. And in this case, more is not better.

By using different sizes of two fonts (or even one), you will solve all the tasks of your website. And having a proper color scheme with a limited number of colors will make your website more interesting and will not harm the usability of a website.

Confusing Exploration

You need to make your website that way, so users will not have to go too deep into the text and image examination. It means that only one glance will be enough to understand the sense.

For this reason, you need to make your headings meaningful (no longer than 35-75 symbols). Base text, if it is evenly spread over the entire width of the page, shouldn’t take more than two rows. Text on cards, icons, and other elements should take no more than three or four rows. Headlines and visual content have to be remarkable and play the role of checkpoints while researching the page, while interaction elements have to be seen from the very beginning of exploration.

Unique Design

A unique and captivating design is essential. It helps make your website recognizable and makes it much more visible in the pool of competitors. But the main goal of design is to solve tasks. The convenience of using the website is always more important than its appearance.

So, the design has to provide visitors with the same path as other websites provide. Don’t make round buttons or right-aligned headings. Of course, making your website remarkable is a great idea, but you should focus on usability in web design.

Long Website Load

Your visitor cannot wait. If there is no sign of the interface within 3 seconds after entering the website, there is a high chance to lose your customers. Optimize content when you pick it. Reduce image size or use modern video compression formats. If the page is large, you should spread the content within several pages logically and evenly.

Keep in mind that your website will be used not only by users with a good connection. This is why you should think about people who use your websites via mobile devices with unstable connections. Usability is based on the quick work of the website.

Too Many Animations

You can add more dynamics to your website and animate the whole page. However, if you do so, the visitor will quickly lose attention and will be unable to focus on information.

Overload with animations is one of the main problems with websites. They might both distract people and make the page load much longer.

There is always a chance that your visitor will not examine the page meaningfully. Maybe, he will just quickly scroll it. But if there are a lot of full-screen animations, the visitor will not get demanded information fast.

Low Website Efficiency

Your page doesn’t only need to load fast, but it also has to work without any interruptions. The user doesn’t have to notice any lags. The efficiency of the website’s pages depends on the code quality, complex animations, a lot of visual content, hosting features, and the website’s output.

Check how your website works on several devices at the same time (e.g., on a laptop with extended characteristics and 2-3-year-old mobile devices). And check how the website will be displayed on different browsers, such as Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Safari. The website has to work perfectly everywhere.

Non-adaptive Design

Always check the usability of the mobile version of the website. While checking it, you should pay attention to the text and image accessibility on the small smartphone screen. Design elements have to be changed due to the features of the vertical screen format.

Also, you can use special blocks for the mobile version, or don’t use blocks that are made for the desktop version only. The main point of usability design is to make the website efficient on all devices.

Lacking Website Navigation

Always give users an opportunity to refresh their experience. Maybe, your customer doesn’t know what to pay attention to. Or the exploration route became not interesting. Or he wants to find the information he didn’t receive while naturally exploring the website. There are a lot of paths, but only one way to improve usability: make functional headers and footers.

The header should include about 4-7 menu elements. This way, the customer will not be distracted by your offers and will have an opportunity to conveniently explore the website. Drop-down lists should be limited. Two lists maximum. The footer can contain as many links as you need. Just make sure you make it useful.

Absence of Service Pages

When you add service pages (e.g., About Us, delivery, guarantees, payments, refund, team, reviews, etc), you achieve two goals. You are useful because your user can get full information about cooperation with you. You show that you are reliable because the client knows exactly who you are and why he can deal with you.

All these pages have to be in the footer of your website. However, if these pages are extremely important for your clients, you should also include them in the header.

Useless Content

Your website should contain only useful information. You need to base on 3 main scenarios while working on content:

• The user appears on the website for the first time and he wants to learn more about you;
• The user sometimes visits your website;
• The user often visits your website.

What is website usability? It is a comfortable route for every visitor to your site. But if you post content that makes no sense, customers will quickly lose their interest, due to the fact they will not understand the goals of your product.

In your content, you have to predict all these scenarios. Novice users have to learn everything about you pretty fast, while repetitive visitors have to quickly find what they need.

Pay attention to the homepage of your website. It has to have a developed system of links, and it has to consistently tell visitors about you and your advantages.

Links to Nowhere

Always check whether links work or not. The user always has to get to the chosen page. Always make a proper 404-page that appears when there are certain issues with a server. From this page, the user has to see that issues are temporary and that they will be solved soon.

If some pages are under constriction, you can create a special page that tells that the page will appear soon.

Non-consistent Design

Always make similar elements look the same. For example, if you want to use yellow buttons, you have to use this color for all the other buttons on all pages. The visitor will see the structure correctly, and will easily explore it.

Such rules are important for all parts of the website, such as the first screen structure, form building, link color, and pop-ups (in full screen or small screen mode).

Annoying Pop-ups

Every time when you place additional advertising messages, try to wear your visitor’s shoes. Will it be interesting for him? Isn’t the banner distracting? Ain’t there too many windows per session? If you feel discomfort, reduce the number of banners. Otherwise, it will harm the usability.

If you decided to use banners, make them textually brief and visually attractive. Text on buttons has to encourage to perform the action (e.g., “use the discount”), while elements for closing windows have to be convenient to click on.

Overloaded Forms

While finishing the purchase, signing up, or ordering services, the client doesn’t want to spend too much time. We understand that collecting information about your audience is important, but asking your clients to tell you a lot of information about them will push them away.

Use required elements with different options only when it grants certain advantages for customers. Such elements are checkboxes and drop-down lists.

Misleading Actions

Remember to be ethical to your customers. Don’t place links that lead to contextually unexpected actions.

For example, you offer to learn more about a certain service and place a link. In this case, you cannot lead your visitor to the page with a form, where they can reach your support team.

No Help From Support

You don’t need to push your visitor to contact you, but he always has to have an opportunity to reach you whenever he wants. Both header and footer have to contain your contact data.

Pay attention to website widgets. They allow communication via the website itself and give an opportunity to directly go to a phone call or chat in messengers.

Deadends On Customer Path

Customer path defines unexpected scenarios of customers’ actions on your website. How he goes to different pages, what he wants to know, which order he uses, and how many clicks are required to achieve his goals. The straightness of this path is the base of usability.

Every page has to contain at least one action. Offer alternative paths for website exploration by showing advertising banners, links to other related pages, service pages with delivery conditions, payment pages, refunds, and “About us” pages. Also, offer related products and services in a special menu at the end of the page.

Product Pages With Lacking Information

If your client doesn’t get enough information on the product page, he can either leave the website or contact you additionally. But he will reach you only if there are no alternatives. To avoid losing clients, make additional descriptions in tabs and add special technical characteristics in files.

Also, don’t forget about breadcrumbs. This is a certain hierarchy that shows categories of products. Breadcrumbs help users understand the groups of products better. When you see any example of usability in modern websites, you will see that the variety of categories is high, in order to make navigation much easier.

A Test To Check Website Usability

There are low chances that you have a huge marketing team, an opportunity to order a usability audit, or you can check the website manually to fulfill all usability criteria. But you can improve the website with a small test. For this reason, you need to do the following steps:

1. Create several groups of users based on different audience parts. These groups can contain 3–5 people.
2. Ask them to explore the website and share their impressions in small questionnaires. Ask them to tell about different features using simple categories, such as “Like”, “Dislike”, “Miss something”, and “Something is not necessary”.
3. Ask them to grade how understandable and convenient your website is. How comfortable it is to perform certain actions to get the required information. Ask them to use a five-point scale to express how they liked or disliked features.

Use the mobile version of the website as a test base, while the desktop one has to remain additional. Of course, it might take time. But the importance of usability cannot be measured, so you should definitely spend your time and effort on such a simple test.

You can improve the usability of your website while your visitors use it by implementing thermal maps. They show which parts of pages attract more attention, and what buttons clients click the most.

Website Usability With Weblium

With Weblium you don’t need to think about minor things that will disappoint customers. The website code is optimized for maximum efficiency, while Google Cloud hosting offers exceptional loading speed. Website design will be consistent, by using global styles that can be easily changed (colors, fonts, and buttons). All website elements are combined. And after creating the desktop version, you automatically get the mobile version without any extra actions. It works and looks just like the full version.