Is your website too hard?Take
“Easy Test” to see if your website is as visitor friendly as it should be! Websites often fail to produce desired results. This can be because visitors find them too hard to understand or navigate. Here are some potential usability problems to avoid.
1.Hard to find
Is your website easy to locate? Do you promote it everywhere, (i.e. business cards, invoices, envelopes, etc.) and is your site search engine friendly? Do you promote benefits of visiting? Is your site address easy to remember and easy to type? Does your url contain easily misspelled words? Is it complicated by repeated letters, i.e. “theentity?” Are there numbers, which can cause confusion, i.e., “1shopping” or “oneshopping?”
2.Hard to engage
Do you make it easy for visitors to understand why they should read on? You have only a few seconds to persuade visitors to begin reading your message. Unless your home page immediately provides an obvious “why buy from us?” benefit, visitors are likely to leave—wasting time and money you spent attracting them to your site.
Home pages should begin with headline that immediately communicates you are familiar with your visitor’s problems and can help them achieve their goals. Time-consuming animations, vapid “welcoming” statements, and “brag and boast” claims, usually turn visitors away.
3.Hard to decide
Do you make it easy for visitors to decide what to read next? The best web sites have a clear and immediately identifiable focus and sequence. Many home pages, however, offer so many navigation options that visitors are paralyzed and choose to leave.
Studies have shown that, if you offer grocery store visitors an opportunity to sample 6 jams, 30% of customers will eventually buy one. But, if you offer 16 samples, response drops to 3%!
4.Hard to return
Do you make it easy for visitors to register for your e-mail newsletter, so you can invite them to return? Unless you obtain your visitor’s e-mail address and permission to contact them in future, you’ll probably never see them again! Many web sites offer visitors an opportunity to sign-up for their e-mail newsletter, however, only a few offer a meaningful incentive to sign-up. Without an incentive, without showing or describing benefits of registering, why should visitors sign up? Most e-mail in-boxes are already filled with unread newsletters!
