How to improve the applicability of the website

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User friendliness: Improving the usability of the site

Let us illustrate the principle of applicability through real-world examples. You go to a shop and want to buy a pair of jeans. You get to the store, but you don't go straight to the jeans counter because you have to walk through a delicate maze. Every time you come to the corner of the maze, you think you've finally found the jeans counter, and you're actually lost in the other corner.

Finally, you got out of the maze and came to the jeans counter. After you've picked out your jeans, you want to pay for the cashier's desk. However, you have to go to the maze again. You may find this story incredible, but many users will experience this when they shop online.

Now it's time to take the site's applicability as a primary consideration. Applicability refers to the design and construction of Web sites based on user-oriented principles. According to the official definition of International Standard Organization (ISO), practicality refers to the effect, efficiency and satisfaction of users in a particular product environment. High applicability means that the system is easy to learn, efficient, fun to use, and can quickly recover errors.

To achieve applicability, it is necessary to avoid users encounter a bad structure of the site to go maze of trouble. Therefore, the structure of the site needs to be simple and straightforward.

Applicability is an essential factor in the next phase of website development. In the early stages of the site's development, companies were scrambling to set up sites without considering how to design a site's structure and how to improve the usability of the site to serve users. In this "enclosure" stage, in order to achieve the goal of rapid establishment of the website, people's use habits and software interface are ignored. Web designers focus on whether the page looks good, without considering the overall applicability. To solve this problem, we need to implement the principle of applicability. Web sites for vertical content and functionality need to be redesigned and shifted to focus, making it easier for users to browse the Web and accomplish tasks easily.

In the latest phase of website development, applicability is no longer an inscrutable concept. Online shoppers are no longer loyal to a particular brand. Thus, when a user encounters difficulties on your site (for example, slow, unclear layout, dead links, etc.), he may immediately run to your competitor's website. With the development of the site, those who do not update the site, and even some of the beautiful Flash animation site, will be like a dinosaur extinction.

A vivid example is 7733.com. Although the site uses a lot of flash technology, it cannot change its tragic fate. Long waiting downloads and confusing structures make the user unbearable, although Flash's pages are appealing. Finally, 7733.com had to "suspend operation temporarily". Now, new investors have launched a new 7733.com, and new sites have reduced download times in large numbers. Only time will tell if the customer will return to the 7733.com.

It's up to the user to decide

Applicability of the application is more complex. Web designers can use some basic technology to improve the user experience of the site. The resources available to your company, including money, people, and time, will determine the extent of applicability.

If your company has funds, you can ask an engineer or company that specializes in suitability testing to make a formal applicability study. The cost is determined by the number of participants, the length of the test, and the location of the company, which is about 15000 dollars. But for small companies with very limited capital and resources, it is not impossible to improve applicability.

To assess the applicability of your site, first check your existing information architecture. Information architecture refers to how your site is organized, how content is arranged, and how the structure of the site is designed to enable users to quickly find the information they need.

A hierarchy is a common way of arranging web site content. This organizational structure uses directories and subdirectories, allowing users to drill down into branches of content. In addition, you can use a linear structure on your site. The linear structure allows users to browse your site in order from beginning to end. No matter which one you use, a good information structure can prompt the user where they are now, how to get back to where they are, and the hyperlinks that are related.

When you make a good structure of the site, you'd better objectively analyze the logic of the website organization is reasonable. is the contents of the directory and subdirectory related? Would it be more appropriate to have subdirectories under another directory? Two subdirectories duplicate content? These problems must be put forward. By carefully studying your site map, you can have a better understanding of the structure of your site.

When you have identified the structure of the site, the next step is to draw the user flow on the paper. At this stage, you will start to design the content of each page, including all the hyperlinks and widgets. You have to set up the right intermediate steps to bring users from the initial super chain to their destination content. The user flow chart should show the user's entry, intermediate steps, and all routes that the user has reached the target page.

User flow charts help you analyze the whereabouts of users on your site, making it easier for users to find useful information. User flow charts can also help you prioritize users ' tasks and make the entire process smoother for users online.

User Feedback

An effective way to get information about Web site applicability is to get feedback from users. If you are willing to take out a little money, you can pay an hour's internet fee to the user who provides the feedback. If you can find friends and relatives to provide free feedback, it would be better! In any case, the most important thing is that feedback provided by feedback can be real and objective.

It is best to select users who are familiar with your site and who have a fair opinion. Of course, the most convenient is to choose from your company's staff. While the company's staff are willing to provide pertinent advice, they are inevitably biased against the company's web site. Therefore, it is best to investigate the applicability of the user outside. But if you can't find an outside user to do an investigation, you can also choose your company's employees, but you have to follow the principle of unbiased.

If you have the ability to do formal applicability research, then you need to work out a questionnaire with the applicability research engineers. The questionnaire should contain the following basic information: Who are your users, their interests and so on. Because the user does not have a long time to investigate, it is best to focus on several important issues. The attitude of the questionnaire should be neutral, do not try to guide the user to answer the question.

Keep in mind that the purpose of the questionnaire is to get feedback from users. If there is some information that you find very easy to locate and they just can't find it, then that's the problem with your site.

Another option for usability research is to give users free feedback. Although such surveys do not allow you to do formal research, they can help you find problems that you cannot find yourself.

Case study: www.asiafind.cn

Www.asiafind.cn recently conducted a lower cost applicability study. But since our funding is not sufficient, we have used some of the techniques mentioned above to enhance the applicability of our website.

Tom,webtools.com's senior editor is mainly responsible for this applicability study. After attending a two-day fitness seminar, Tom began his investigation with the skills he had learned. His first step was to create a graph of user flow on paper for www.asiafind.cn.

Tom told us that everyone thought it was a joke when they asked to analyze the structure of the site based on the paper model. "We all think it's a joke to use this low-tech approach to solve the problem of high technology," said Tom. "But when he tried this method on webtools.com, he didn't laugh at all." By this method, Tom found that some of the popular pages that users visited www.asiafind.cn were not straightforward enough, as he had hoped.

After a fresh look at the structure of the site, Tom set up a new model on paper and tested it with colleagues. By using the new model, it is easier for users to access www.asiafind.cn's popular pages. Tom applied the new structure to www.asiafind.cn after Tom had confirmed his idea of the new structure.

In the new structure, if a user clicks on a large directory, such as "design", www.asiafind.cn will display the relevant subdirectory for the user to choose from. (for example, after clicking "Design", the two subdirectories of graphic design and website design will appear for the user to choose.) In this way, users can quickly find what they are interested in.

You can visit www.asiafind.cn to see if it's easy to find what you're interested in.

User satisfaction means he will visit again

Some web designers feel that applicability forces them to give up creativity. The truth is not as they think. In fact, applicability has created a new level of design for them: organizing information in a more straightforward manner while maintaining the design style. It has been proven that overly focused design sites do not survive long because they lack applicability. (I don't think we're taking 7733.com for example)

Achieving applicability is very complex, and there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all approach. Different users will give web designers different challenges. Therefore, an E-commerce site solution will not apply to an entertainment site.

As long as you do, you will understand that the problem of applicability will continue to evolve like anything else on the web. Even if you have improved the usability of your site, you need to keep trying to adapt to new developments.

Even if you can't afford the research on professional applicability, you can do a lot of things yourself to improve the usability of your site. Finally, I want to tell you that the purpose of improving applicability is to retain users and win users. If you have improved the usability of your site, users will visit your site more often, visit more and more pages, and then your efforts have been effective. The applicability of the website is not only good for the users, but also good for your company.