I have benefited a lot! Six principles for improving website availability to benefit from availability

I have benefited a lot! Six principles for improving website availability to benefit from availability

Generally, there are three types of websites:

The first type of website has outstanding creativity and design. Such a website will give you a Wow. However, unfortunately, they have nothing but good design.

The second website lacks creativity and design, but you can immediately find what you want! But will you turn it off because they are visually less attractive?

The best website is the perfect combination of availability and visual attraction. Such a website will attract you to continue accessing it. From the marketing perspective, this is the best type.

A good-looking website has no value if it does not allow users to access it continuously, increase usage conversion rates, or achieve sales targets. If you want them to come back, instead of simply turning around and leaving after praising them. You should not simply satisfy users' visual pleasure.

If you want users to continue accessing your website and become loyal users, you should consider improving website availability and user-centric design principles. This means to focus on user needs and provide efficient and easy-to-use websites. If you do, you will gain trust. That's simple.

Please note that improving availability is not equivalent to improving user experience. The focus of user experience is to improve users' psychological positive feelings. Of course, improving availability will make your users happy, which will ultimately lead to a positive user experience.

Let's start with some simple principles for improving availability.

I. Do not let users think

This is the most important principle to improve availability, which was proposed by Steve Krug in his book Don't Make Me Think.

The designer must read books in "Awesome! The designer's guide for self-study is highly recommended and accompanied by PDF downloads.

Web pages should be easy to understand. Users subconsciously know where they can click and where they can get what they want. No need to think about it.

Achieving this will undoubtedly make your users feel happy. Let's use MailChimp as a classic example.

MailChimp

This page of MailChimp is very simple. To improve availability, you don't need to do any groundbreaking design. You just need to make the right things appear in the right position (where the user expects them to appear.

Another outstanding aspect of this page is that it does not make users feel "select Phobia". This is another principle that must be known.

2. Avoid "select Phobia 」

When a person faces too many options, they often do not make any choice, or select an option that is already the most familiar. This kind of "select Phobia" not only appears on webpages, but is also common in life. For example, when a cafe faces various coffee names written on the blackboard. "Select phobias" is really disturbing. It will make people give up their choices or choose to go back to what they are already familiar.

New users do not have to worry about what to do next. This page of MailChimp is also doing very well in this aspect.

Tip: the most necessary options must be emphasized, such as the important operation buttons such as "free registration. Other options can be included in "more", which can effectively avoid too many options on a page.

You can add "more" to unimportant options 」

3. Give users what they want immediately

When users browse a website, they look like they are hanging out in a traditional offline store and do not view all the details. They are just looking for what they really need. Users do not read it word by word on the website. They only browse it at will. Once something meets their needs, they will click to open it.

Experience: Do not make users feel that "This seems to take a long time to read 」.

For example, you can use visual means to meet the needs of these fast viewers.

Below is an example of how Bang2Joom visually visualizes the payment plan.

Convenient and quick viewing of visual information

This allows you to intuitively compare the differences between different payment plans and select the appropriate one, which is very clear and simple.

4. Search 」

The content provided by your website must meet the user's needs, so it makes sense to search. In particular, websites like Wikipedia that have a large number of different fields of content, the "Search" function is required.

Wikipedia search

Best practices for the search box:

• The search box must be available on all pages, not the homepage.
• The search box must be long enough (such as Google's) for users to conveniently view and modify.
• The search box must be intelligent. When searching, users can provide similar "common search terms" for their reference. In addition, when you enter a word, you can directly provide some "recommendation results" below 」. The search on the Apple official website is a good example of this best practice.

Search on the official Apple website

5. Learn about your users

Young geeks love to explore new things. A bit complex website, if there is good content, will have a strong interest in young people. They may also be curious to explore all options and click all buttons. For example, Gamestop, I once spent hours on this website and didn't realize it was a little difficult to use.

Style = "color: # e36c09 ″ Gamestop

The adult situation is different. They are more conservative, more concise, and more resistant to new things.

Therefore, when designing a website, you need to consider your target user group.

Taking Google as an example, there are a wide range of users, but no one will encounter obstacles, because it achieves a very good balance between simplicity and functionality.

A few more tips!

• Note the "banner blind zone". In fact, users often ignore things that look very like advertisements. They notice advertisements but still ignore them. Try not to show the elements that look like an advertisement (for example, the block information stacked on the right of a webpage ).
• If you require registration, measure the user's time and minimize the number of options to be entered, leaving only the most important.
• Allow "unsubscribe with one click 」.
• Never forget the mobile phone users. Responsive design!
• Do not allow users to rely only on the browser to move forward and backward. If they need to "return", let them use "return" on the website instead of the browser.
• Let the design serve the content.
• Emphasize the link. Only by moving the cursor over the text can a link be identified as a disaster experience.

Now, I think you are ready to improve the availability of your website and provide a better user experience.

Of course, these principles are not applicable to all situations and may require specific analysis. However, we still have a hand. The last point of the six principles is that they truly apply to all situations. Last, and most importantly.

Vi. Test

Testing is the key to improving website availability. As we said at the beginning, there are countless ways to design, create, and maintain a successful website. Even if you try it, you must test and check the effect and continuously improve it, in order to continuously get better results!

Good luck at last!