Website Usability and Design Fundamentals

There are millions upon millions of sites available for browsing, shopping, entertainment, and information.  Unfortunately, a lot of these sites are poorly designed and lose readership or even loyal customers because of it.  Here are some considerations to take in when designing your website.

First and foremost, are you choosing the right affordable low cost web hosting?  A bad host will offer no support, no up-time guarantee, and very little communication as to what is going on with your server.  Site downtime and slow loading times have a dramatic affect on your user experience.  Be sure to evaluate all of these things before selecting an affordable low cost web hosting option.

Have you chosen the right language for your web site?  A poor language selection can hamper loading times, present a heavy load on server processes, and even make your site much more cluttered than it needs to be.  Evaluate the functionality you desire from your website and compare those with the languages available and accessible today.  Remember that some languages require certain installations on your discount web hosting server, so be sure to contact your affordable low cost web hosting company before finalizing your decision.

Are you using a lot of tables, frames, and flash in your site?  These elements can make a site harder to read, harder to understand, and even present loading problems in some browsers.  Tables and frames make coding a site a great deal easier and flash certainly adds some flair to your site.  But, before implementing these features, evaluate the costs and draw up your own cost benefit analysis.

Do you have too much clutter on your page?  There are so many wonderful and interesting web page elements that you can implement.  However, choose wisely!  Too much junk and the core of your site will be lost in a pile of nonsense.  For example, though weather feeds and stock quotes are nice, do you really need these elements on your front page?  Are they detracting from your main goal of conveying your information or products?  Ask yourself these questions before adding those really cool elements to your page.

Think about the size of your page.  How do you feel when you go to those really long ebook advertisement pages?  It feels like the web site development skills of a fifth grader meet that of a shoddy product.  Your main priority should be making your site easy to read and follow for your user.  Emphasize organization and navigation so that your users can find exactly what they are looking for at a mere glance.  The average user spends 2.5 seconds on a web page.  Having a wall of text is not utilizing those 2.5 seconds to the best of your ability.  Also, by presenting a wall of text or just over-bearing site, you are dramatically increasing loading time.  Some people still have dial-up internet or very slow DSL.  You do not want to exclude these customers from your market simply because your site takes too long to load.  If you continue to have problems with loading even after you have simplified your site, contact your budget web hosting company as soon as possible to see if there is an outstanding issue.

We all love pictures.  They bring a visual element and proof of what we are speaking about into our site.  However, two many pictures can be a real drag on your website.  They increase loading time and hinder the performance of your server.  Contact your affordable low cost web hosting company if site loading seems far too slow. But, you might want to consider organizing your site so that users intentionally browse to a pictures section, instead of just throwing them in their face.  A good implementation of this would be a photo gallery or album section.

Do your users get lost on your site?  Most people will leave a site very quickly if they cannot find what they are looking for.  In order to stop this, consider implementing a site map or search feature (or at least a link to these features) on every page of your site.  This will assist users in pinpointing exactly what they are looking for, keeping their interest focused on your site instead of the next one in line.

Your affordable low cost web hosting company may have a great deal of advice to offer you as well.  Or, they could have partners they work with to provide design critiques, assistance, and changes for their customers.  Contact your affordable web hosting company today to see if they can assist you with any of these needs.