Web Design tips: Usability errors

Article Description: What are some of the most common usability errors you will make in web design?

High-quality usability has been at the heart of the industry's discussions over the past decade because it is becoming more and more important to users. Good usability can also help build brand awareness, thereby enhancing the user's evaluation of a website or a company. Today people are still highly concerned about usability, because companies big and small have proven how important a good usability strategy is.

Over the past few years, good usability has been at the heart of successful start-ups. In most cases, simple ideas are most creative, and usability is mainly about making a feature or product easy to use, but keeping the quality of the product at a high level.

Nowadays, many articles talk about the universal meaning. After years of discussion on the topic, it seems that web designers are still having a hard time understanding it. Usability is no longer a joke, the following suggestions should be printed and glued to the wall opposite your desk.

Color of links

I often find that the links on some pages are not highlighted in some way while browsing the web. This is the stupidest mistake I've ever seen. I would like to access those links using the default blue page instead of links and plain text on a color page. Users need to know how to navigate between pages and where to click on links. You can't expect them to skim through all the text of the mouse line to find the link until the mouse arrow turns into a "little hand."

　　

I fully understand that sometimes, for design reasons, links can't be highlighted with a color that makes them seem too abrupt. This is entirely understandable. But you can add a text style or a dotted box, and all you need is to emphasize the link in one way or another.

The links you have visited should also be displayed in different ways to distinguish them from the default link colors. This will help users know what they have visited and determine where to go next. Some sites can confuse users, but letting them know what they've visited will definitely make them feel better about your site.

Bad typography.

When we talk about typography, it's not that we need a big headline, or a nice piece of text. When we consider usability, the beauty of typography is not that important, it's how typography makes our content easy to read.

The tight-lined text will make the person who reads it feel a lot of headaches, but it should not be a headache for the designer. He just needs to simply increase the line height, segment it, increase the text size, and change the font to make it easier to read.

In web design, how to match the font and what color to wake visitors, is not very important. Of course, that's better for you. In the past few years, we have always mistakenly put the importance of beauty on the functional. In fact, the most important features of the site it is easy to use, it does not like the graphic design field as there are very big limitations. Sometimes we don't care how good-looking it can be, just need it to work properly.

Let me give you a further explanation. Two of the latest design trends on the internet, minimalism and flat design, are extremely simple and focused on the content of the presentation rather than the background image should be more beautiful. The reason why minimalism and flat design are becoming more popular is that they are very simple, and work well-sometimes it's hard to believe such a simple site can achieve great success, you go to the site, read the content, and then leave, nothing to distract you, no flash, There is no JavaScript that slows down the load of the site, no beautiful flowers or drawings, just content.

　　

Now, you should understand how important it is to make content easy to access, not to spend too much time in the first moment thinking about how to make a website look beautiful--no matter how beautiful the font is, it's useless if someone can't read it.

No reference Convention

It is important to refer to design practices and ease of use recommendations, because whoever you are, as long as you do that, the user will spend as much time on your site as on other sites, which means you're on the same line as the rest of us.

Let me give you an example of what I really want to see. There is a Web site where a link is placed on the navigation bar to exit the page. The function of this button is very different from what the navigation bar usually understands, and this design violates the design convention.

Fortunately, in recent years, the situation has improved a lot, but still can be found in some of the low-level errors should not occur, such as: Loop display module above the link failure, or click on the link when the pop-up box. So follow the design conventions.

Avoid answering questions

Users can browse the Web with a goal. Maybe to entertain, perhaps to find information, perhaps to stay in touch with family or friends, perhaps for other purposes. No matter what they do, there is always a goal.

The most important thing you need to remember now is that most of the time, users are looking for certain information on the Internet. They went to Google to search for something; they went to Wikipedia to learn something; they go to the corporate site to learn about product information. They always have a goal.

　　

When I explicitly want to go to the web to find an answer to a question, they are not found, this problem has occurred to me n times. I can understand why design agents are not always highlighting price factors, because there are too many variables in one project, I just can't understand why a salon doesn't tell me how much it costs to get a haircut, and I can't understand why the car wash company's website doesn't highlight how much money I need to clean my car. So why do you have to build a website on this earth? I just don't think it's good for you or your visitors, neither of you can get any useful information from them.

It's a good idea to know their intentions when visitors visit your site, if someone wants to download a blog theme, then lead them to the download area, if they want to play the game, try to put more games on it, if they are to understand the price of products or services you can provide, then highlight them.

The reason you need to consider the needs of your site visitors is that your site is not built for yourself, if you are built for yourself, you do not network, directly on your own computer to see on it, a site is built for visitors, visitors are there needs, to achieve their (needs)!

Small Block clickable Area

Because I bought a Mac so I never use a mouse. In fact, I bought a magic mouse, just three days after they were released and sold. Because to me there is no more need to use the mouse place. I use the touch pad to move the computer pointer very skillfully. But I remember that five years ago, when I was still using a PC, I had all kinds of junk mice. They are not always accurate, and it is difficult to locate them frequently while hovering over a small area.

Now I don't have that problem anymore. But the web is not just for me. There are hundreds of millions of users, so you should understand that not all of them are so adept at using these wonderful tools.

Small clickable areas can sometimes be uncomfortable. You may want to make the font smaller, because you believe it looks beautiful, but you have to consider how much your decision affects usability (let's look at readability again).

It is important not only to ensure that the links are visible, but also to make them clickable. The smaller the area, the more difficult it is for people to click on them. There is a Web site that tends to move behind the scenes-that is, the layout needs to be adapted to smaller screens. One of the things that needs to be adapted is the buttons, which, according to advice, should become larger on portable devices so they are easily clicked.

The same strategy applies to the desktop environment. The new wave of flattened user interfaces is the evangelist of this idea. You won't have the trouble of clicking on big and clear links. Make sure your users are more comfortable browsing. Again, focus on functionality and make it look beautiful as a cherry on top of a magical cake.

Missing contact information

There are a few things that annoy me more than bad customer service. One of them is the inability to contact boarding or the company responsible for the business.

As we discussed earlier, people always visit the Web page with a purpose. If their goal is to get in touch with you, then from their point of view, if the contact is not found, then this page is useless.

　　

There is no excuse to not provide contact information. If you do not want to make your own phone number public, you can leave your e-mail. By the right, you can also buy a cheap mobile phone with a good deal, then leave this number, or apply for a new e-mail. Do you want to avoid junk mail? You can use a contact method that is not automatically recognized by a machine. It's no big deal to share Twitter or Facebook addresses. It's nothing, just give your client a chance to find you in some way.

Search function

Many users are task-oriented, that is, they come to the site only to get the specified information and not be interested in anything else. In this way, you will find how important a good search function will become.

But that doesn't mean you need to provide a search bar on every page, and if you run a design company and only a single page site is used to provide information about projects and contacts, there's no need to provide search functionality.

　　

However, if you run a blog or any other content-featured website, search will be the first feature many users will use, research shows that the first time to find the search bar of the proportion of users accounted for more than half of all users, it is really great beyond our imagination.

Assuming you run a Web site on a WordPress-like platform, you'll be able to take advantage of its in-house integrated search capabilities, and you can always use Google-provided searches, because the smart-search engine may have indexed all of your (or most) pages, You no longer need to write your own search function, so you have no reason not to use it on your site.

Mandatory registration requirements

Allowing users to have a preview of the software or features before they have to register or pay is much better than asking them to sign up immediately. Some excellent concepts or ideas that I see on the internet always require me to register first, which is unpleasant.

No, I don't want to leave my phone number, address, and shoe code for you until I can use your application. I need to try it out right now to decide if it's right for me.

This statement, but also mobile phone ux/ui Design Master Luke Wroblewski (the relevant reference in the end of the article) endorsed. He believes that users should have a glimpse into the product before making a decision. It's simple, and it's all about the meaning.

　　

No matter what you do, sell or produce, don't ask users on the Internet to pay if they are not sure they need the product, or they will feel cheated, and of course you will lose them forever. A good example is the Fruit Ninja, a very cool game on the iOS platform, it always comes in the form of a free sample version, and then after a period of time, when you're already hooked on the sample version, you feel like you have a bit of a bigger challenge, and then you buy the full version of the game. This is what I do, and I think it does say that in the past, will I be able to buy this game at the beginning without a demo? Nonsense.

This is not just a lesson for designers, but also for many companies and manufacturers, if your product is good enough, do not immediately appeal to the user to order, instead, you should provide them with free trial of your product opportunities, you should be sure that if the product is really you think so good, they will buy.

Registration Form

Another issue that Luke Wroblewski often mentions in his key tips is the registration form. I have ever used to register. You'd like to sign up for an account right away (because in a way he can meet some of your needs), but because the registration form is too long. So you may give up registering, such a potential customer will lose.

Make the registration form as simple as possible. Only the most important information, mailboxes, passwords, and user names are required. After completing the registration, you can let them choose to fill in more details. This is also consistent with the same principles mentioned earlier. In order to submit, users need to try your product first. If customers are unsure whether they like your product, then why would they give you information about their home address, real name, and job title? At most you get some false information, and you don't get real information until they're sure they want to use your product.

　　

Today, many websites can be implemented via Twitter or Facebook. This is great and makes the login very simple and quick. You don't need to remember too many accounts and passwords for this. As long as you can log on to Facebook, you can also log in to those websites that use API registration. Although not everyone uses this approach, please provide the user with this possible way to login

Inconsistent design

If the site has a white background and a top navigation area, do not make the relevant pages black and move the navigation to the bottom of the page. It makes me wonder if I'm still on the same Web site, and I don't want to waste my time on this issue.

The entire site should remain the same layout. Give your page grid system A number of columns, whether it is a few columns as appropriate, and implement this rule throughout the site. The same rules apply to background color, link color, typography and design principles. To make sure I'm still on the same site before clicking on the "about" page.

Misuse of the picture

One of the basic principles of design is not to use the elements that you actually need. This is also true for pictures, and don't use them just to fill the page. Research has shown that users tend to ignore images that simply populate the page. So if you don't have anything to show, the last thing I want to see is a random display of pictures.

If you decide to use pictures, at least make sure you put them in the right place. I hate a website, write the text to a two-column wide table, and use the whole line wide picture to separate the text. It always makes me think: Should I look at the second column on the right and see the first column under the picture, or should I look at the first column under the picture first? It's disgusting, and what's even more disgusting is that different websites are using different ways to deal with the problem. If you want to use a picture, make sure that I am reading the text will not be affected by the image too much, this is the most important. All I need is to read.

Oh, by the way, if you want to know why I'm not willing to consider this (or why the user is unwilling to consider it), I highly recommend that you look at Steve Krug's book. You can find a link to the book in the last reference of this article.

Conclusion

If you want to be a good web designer, just follow the steps above. You don't have to be a user experience expert, and I write really just a few common sense, but most of the time they make a top-tier site different from a decent one.

This is also largely attributable to your interest in the user. If you're making a site just to make a living, you don't need these rules. You may also be a less-than-expected designer who will fail for several years. If you think more about your visitors and want to give them a good site experience, then you need to know what the basics are to start working on. As mentioned earlier, the site does not need to be beautiful. It should be remembered that nothing is more beautiful than a simple, running website.