6 Usability Tips for a Richer User Experience	Visited: 1288 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Kabir Bedi November 18, 2009

Usability is an integral part of website design. No matter what the genre of your website is, unless it is usable for the visitors, you cannot hope for online success. That is why it becomes extremely important to ensure that your website is easily usable by the users.

Here are 6 usability guidelines that will help you to enhance the user experience of your website and make it a favorite among your audiences.

Keep Form Labels Above the Field

Many websites place labels to the left of the fields thus creating a two column layout. This may look good but its not the most easy to use. Forms are vertically oriented, therefore users go through it from top to bottom. Thus, it becomes much more easier for them if form labels are located above the fields. Users are able to maintain the top-to-bottom flow without having to look left-ways for corresponding labels.

Users Focus on Faces

Web users by nature concentrate on people's faces and eyes. In fact, studies have established that users actually look in the direction the people in the image are looking at. This is the reason why people images are used to accentuate the website design. You can use this phenomenon to attract visitors' attention to important parts of your web pages.

Design Quality determines Credibility

Web users generally 'judge the book by its cover'. They judge a website based on its design. This is why website design is extremely important. All the elements of your website, be it layout, consistency, typography, colors and themes... all influence the users' inference of the website quality. Therefore, make sure that your website design looks professional and projects a good image on your audiences. Also consider the quality of the website content, amount of errors, rate of updates, ease of use and trustworthiness of authors.

Don't make your Users Scroll

Majority of users, when they visit your website for the first time, don't scroll. They just view the content above the fold and establish their opinion about your website. Therefore, make sure you place all the key content and important elements above the fold, especially on landing pages. However, take care not to cramp the space with too much information. Rather, prioritize the various elements and organize the most important ones above the fold.

Follow the Conventions

When it comes to web browsing, there are certain usage patters that people follow. When people visit a new website, they look for things in places where they expect to find them. And they expect certain things to be the same like link colors, location of website logo, behavior of tabbed navigation and so on. Therefore, adhere to the conventions of the web. Make the links blue, keep the logo to the top left corner and so on.

Make the Search Box at least 27-Characters wide

Websites often have short search boxes to conserve space. The problem with this is even though you can type out a long query, you can only read a portion of the text at a time. This makes it difficult to revise and edit what you have typed. Thus, make sure the search box is at least 27 characters wide so as to ease the use.