WordPress Usability

Did you know?:

Every £1 invested in improving your website’s usability can return £10 to £100 (source: IBM) back to your business.

A web usability redesign can increase the sales/conversion rate by 100% (source: Jakob Nielson)

Your website has to be easy to navigate

Users have gradually become accustomed to particular layouts and locations for buttons, links and sections of the site. If specific elements are not in the places that they expect them to be in, it causes the user to have to search for what they seek.

Pages must download quickly

Usability studies have shown that 8.6 seconds is the maximum time web users will wait for a page to download (source: Andrew B. King – Speed Up Your Site). Although in todays times with advanced technologies, this is now expected to be less than 5 seconds.

Information should be easy to retrieve

We read web pages in a different manner to the way we read books or magazines. We don’t read pages word-for-word – instead we scan web pages, firstly by the headlines, then subheadlines, before focusing on the body content to find what they are looking for. Understanding this and re-approaching your sites’ design can have amazing impacts on usability and overall experience.

Don’t restrict users

Don’t prevent your users from navigating through your site in the way that they want to.

There are obviously lots more do’s and don’t when it comes to usability, but above are the top 4 and you’d be suprised just how many designers miss these basic fundamental principles, leading to poor conversions, higher bounce rates, a confused user and thus lower ROI for the WordPress site owner.