Site usability is an important component when creating a structure and design. Therefore, (pardon the tautology), the designer must design the design, taking into account the convenience for the visitors. In this article, I will try to provide recommendations for improving usability.
What is website usability
Usability is from English. usability - "ability to use", "usefulness", "ability to be used" (excerpt from Wikipedia). In other words, it is the simplicity and convenience of sites for users.More than 70% of sites have problems with promotion, with sales, with a lack of a permanent audience, precisely because of poor usability. If the bounce rate is high, this is one of the signs of not very good usability.
The higher this indicator, the more negatively search engines will relate to the site, which in turn will affect the promotion.
It turns out that the more convenient the site is, the more visitors will stay on it, send an application, make a purchase, add to bookmarks, go to other pages, stay on the site. Such visits will not be perceived by search engines as bounces.
Looking at YandexMetrica, you shouldn’t take the entire bounce rate as accurate data. After all, there are times when a visitor immediately finds the information he needs and leaves the site very quickly. Don’t forget this factor.
General Usability Tips
Yandex began to take usability into account since 2011. And here’s what he recommends to site owners:
Yandex recommendations:
Intuitive navigation system
Logical structure
No ads that prevent users from receiving information (for example, pop-ups).Of course, we put the usefulness of the resource first. Also, the site must work correctly, be visually pleasing and user-friendly.
Operability
If the site has buttons, feedback forms, they should work.
If there are links on the site, they should not be broken and lead to non-existent pages. A 404 page should be configured on the site. If the link leads to a page from which the user will not be able to return back, then such a page should open in a new window.
Popup windows
If your site has pop-ups, they shouldn’t prevent visitors from getting the information they need.
User friendliness
Developers / designers have an unspoken rule of three clicks. The bottom line is that the user, once on the site, should be able to get to the information of interest to him, in a maximum of 3 clicks. The more nested pages are, the worse the site’s usability.
But this rule should not be taken as an axiom. In fact, if the structure of the site is clear to the user, then it will not be a problem for him to make even 5-6 clicks.