Creating User-Friendly Web Sites

Is your web site user-friendly? You may have no trouble finding what you are looking for at your web site, but that doesn’t mean your potential customers can find what they are looking for. Many business owners want to give their visitors a fancy WOW-looking web site and many web designers want to show off their creative talent. As a result, the internet is littered with web sites that confuse visitors and drive them away to other web sites.

What is the biggest problem that Web sites have these days? In the early days, the biggest problems sites had was with value. They just weren’t delivering value. Now that’s improved, but over the last few years, the bigger problem has become navigation. As sites get bigger and more complex, they have much more value, but it’s harder to have people get to what they want.

Say you are an insurance company that wants to provide information to users looking for coverage. In the same place where users are asked what kind of coverage they want, there should be information about what the right coverage ought to be. But often, you’ll find the information isn’t available on that page. You might be able to find it somewhere else, if you look through several layers, but it’s not available where it’s most appropriate.

How do well-designed sites happen? The really good sites are designed by groups that ask and answer three questions: Who are your target users? What are their goals? And how are you going to help them achieve those goals?

How about bad sites? Some companies have a very internal or self-centered view of design. Lacking a focus on customers, they’ll be trying to make design decisions in a committee, and a VP of marketing will come into the room and say, ‘I like that one,’ or ‘That one works for me.’ When I am sitting in on these meetings, I always say, ‘I don’t care what any of you like. This isn’t about satisfying your needs. It’s about satisfying your customers’ needs.’

Quoted from The Wall Street Journal, “Good Site, Bad Site: Evolving Web Design”, 06/12/2007

Give Your Web Visitors What They Want

Some business owners tend to think that what they like is exactly what their customers or potential customers like. So, they decide what to put on to the web site solely based on their personal preferences. The purpose of a web site is to provide valuable information to its visitors and give them what they are looking for. Here are a few things that a business owner could do to facilitate the design of a visitor-friendly web site:

Study competing web sites and list what you like and what you don’t like about these web sites.
Having a brainstorm session with the web design team often yields good design ideas.
Survey your customers about what they want to see on your web site.
Monitor visitors’ behavior at your web site, such as how long visitors stay, how many pages they view, which pages are viewed more often, etc.
Collect feedback from customers about how to make improvement. Sometimes it helps by providing some incentives, like a discount or prize drawing, to encourage customers to give honest feedback.

It is very important to keep in mind that your web site ISN’T about what you like. It is about what your customers like!

User-Friendly Web Design & Redesign – Minneapolis St. Paul, Minnesota

Not all web sites are created equal. A web site designed for the users brings traffic, leads and revenue. A web site designed for the business owner or the web designer can drive away consumers who want to buy your products or services.

There are many web design companies in the Minneapolis St. Paul, MN. However, few of them know how to create web sites that connect with your customers. At Site Revamp, our goal is to market your business through a powerful effective web site. Over the years, we have studied consumer behavior and know what work and what don’t work. The business web sites we have designed or re-designed have delivered exceptional results. Talk with our web designers and get your web design on the right track.