What is Website Usability and Why is it Important?

With search engines changing their algorithms frequently, it’s important that business owners focus on core elements. As more people are shifting to multiple mobile devices from desktops, the need for superior web usability becomes important. Website usability is nothing but the ability of users to access your website seamlessly and easily on multiple devices. 

As more search engines are focusing on offering the best user experience to visitors, it has become vital to redefine the entire user experience. Whether you are into an ECommerce business or into an enterprise or have a personal branding website, web usability is a key to online success. 

Some common and key aspects of website usability practices are mobile-friendliness, easy navigation, informative content, and so on. Along with these, the use of the correct font size, color scheme, and theme you are using for your website also plays a major role in adding more value to the UX. Even if you improve the text style by certain aspects, it can improve the overall usability in an exponential manner. 

When businesses hone website usability, it also helps them boost their SEO efforts and generate more traction and leads. There are some key principles of website usability that you need to know. 

Availability and accessibility

These two aspects of web usability are the most fundamental pillars. First, let’s talk about availability on your website. Here availability means that the website is available to access all the time and there should not be any server downtime. It is because, if the server is down, the bounce rate will increase and will harm the overall website’s credibility. And when it comes to accessibility, it means that the website is accessible on every mobile device. To improve these factors, focus on the below aspects:

Server uptime:

It’s important while choosing the hosting plan that the server uptime is higher and it offers uninterrupted services. The majority of the hosting service providers offer uptime up to 99.8% and you won’t have such downtime. But you should not be taking any chances on the uptime of your website. If possible, go for cloud hosting which is dedicated and offers you seamless service. 

Fix broken links

Broken links are terrible for your website and it hampers the overall website usability. When a user clicks on the link and it’s broken, then the visitor jumps to another website and they might not come back. So, It’s important that you audit your website for broken links and fix them on priority. As search engines also pay great attention to links, it’s important that you ensure no links are 404 on your website. 

Mobile responsiveness

Mobile responsiveness is among the hottest and most important aspects of website usability that you need to focus on. Mobile responsiveness ensures that all the pages are loading seamlessly on every mobile device. Be it the navigation, menu, or the buttons and the content, everything needs to be responsive so that the maximum audience can access your website. 

Focus on clarity

Clarity is strongly linked with the website usability factor and you need to focus on improving it. Clarity refers to the ability of how well your audience can understand your content and take the necessary action to grow your business. There should not be any element in the website that will confuse or misguide the visitors. The interface should be clean and simplistic so that the users don’t get confused about taking any action. While you design new landing pages or optimize the existing pages, make sure the call to action is clear and most people will understand what you want them to do. If you want them to subscribe to your email list, or buy products, the CTA should be clear and precise. To establish more clarity on your website, follow these factors:

• Focus on what’s most important for the users and what actions do you want them to take to grow your business. If the CTA is confusing, consider redesigning it. 
• Don’t experiment too much with the design and there should be some elements that are familiar to the visitors and the audience will not get confused. 
• Focus on establishing a consistent layout throughout the website. It should not feel like visiting another website while switching from one page to another. 
• Try to implement a quick guide so that your visitors can navigate through the important pages. Don’t expect your users to visit every page on their own. 
• It’s important that you focus on the overall architecture optimization of your website. Before you design your website, it’s important that you first design the architecture. 

Improve the learnability

Many people will hear this term form for the first time but learnability is an important aspect of website usability. There should not be any learning curve for using the website so keep it easy, simple, and seamless for your users. If you are redesigning the website, ensure you have an interface that is already known to the users. If the usability is complex and the UI is difficult to use, then visitors can’t spare time to figure out how the website works.  

Many businesses struggle to generate and scale their sales, but due to improper website usability, they can’t make it. By resolving website usability issues, you can ensure there is no barrier in placing orders and driving more sales. If you are trying new concepts, then make sure you first test the design among the teams. 

Focus on establishing a minimalist design so that all sets of users can access it quickly and take action on the CTA. While designing the landing pages, many people try to take the design principles to extreme levels and they lose the interaction with the page. So, keep it simple and easy to use. 

Why website usability is important

There are several benefits that you can achieve by fixing the website’s usability. Below are some key benefits that you get from improving website usability:

• More traction
• Improved sales
• More brand awareness
• Security
• Higher loading speeds

More traction

Many businesses, especially the new ones struggle to generate more traction and traffic to their website. the key to improving this is to focus on fixing the technical shortcomings of the website and getting more traffic comes to your website. As search engines also focus on robust websites that are cutting-edge in technical aspects, you will get more visibility on organic results. Whatever your business goal is — more sales, traffic, or branding, proper website usability can get you going. When you focus on top-notch traction, business overall authority improves.

Improved sales

If you are into the ECommerce business, then website usability becomes even more important than ever. It is because ECommerce businesses are directly linked to transactions and you need to ensure that the website is seamless and works faster across all platforms. When you focus on excellent website usability, sales improve significantly. As the overall SEO efforts also bring the maximum results, it gives you more visibility in the organic search results. When your team combines search optimization tactics along with web usability principles, you can thrive online on more sales. Even if you are getting started, keep the website foundation strong and focus on seamless website usability. 

More brand awareness

The majority of business websites struggle to generate healthy brand awareness among their competition. It. This thing happens because the bounce rate is already high and it becomes difficult for users to navigate through pages. So, with proper website usability, you can ensure that the bounce rate is minimum and customers will have a seamless experience. When you offer an excellent experience, the overall branding improves significantly. Whether you get the traffic from social media, direct, or through organic results, the brand awareness will grow regardless of any factor. 

Security

Security is an important aspect of website usability and when you ensure that your site and visitors’ personal data is safer, you gain more popularity among the competitors. Make sure you integrate SSL certificates and other needful compliances to give the most secure experience to your visitors. When more customers come to know that you also care for their personal data protection, the sales and traction will grow dramatically. If you don’t have an in-house team, you can hire a developer to integrate SSL with your website and make it secure. 

Higher loading speeds

Speed is a major ranking factor and you need to make sure that the website loads faster on both desktop and mobile devices. You can use Google’s free tool to check whether the website loads faster on both platforms. When you add new pages to your website, make sure you test them and ensure they are also loading faster.

Final thoughts on website usability 

Website usability is a major element that all business owners need to focus on. Keep the above things in mind while optimizing your website and ensure your customers get the best user experience. Get started with the above tactics and gain a competitive edge over others in this competitive domain.