5 Easy Tips To Increase User Experience

Posted on 26. Nov, 2009 by Shawn Ramsey in Featured, Misc

img source: Konstantin Sutyagin

When creating a website, it’s important that you focus on designing it for your users. This may seem all to obvious but, these are the people that actually navigate through all of those categories, tags and popular posts. You need to make sure that you keep all of the elements of your site user-friendly and functional for your visitors in order for them to have a great user experience.

There are some elements that users almost expect to be implemented into a site these days. Keeping up with current trends is one way to keep your site consistent across the board. Now, I’m not saying make your website a cookie cutter replica of every other site, by all means be creative and original in your design.

I visit lots of sites on a daily basis, and I must say that a large percentage of them do offer a great user experience. Unfortunately, there are a few that I have come across that just do a poor job of “helping me out” when it comes to some basic elements.

So, what can we do to improve the overall user experience on our sites? Here are just a few simple tips that are sometimes overlooked.

Is your logo clickable?

One trend that users almost expect to be used by websites now is a clickable logo. Let’s say that you just got through reading an article deep within a website and then wanted to check out their homepage, the first thing that a lot of people do is click the logo. If nothing happens, then there are really only a couple of options:

Click it again in hopes that it will miraculously work this time
Hunt down an actual ‘home’ button
Hit the back button and get out of there

Most sites are already taking advantage of this convenient trend but, if you are not, it’s something you should really consider. WebDesignerDepot takes this idea a step further and adds a cool mouseover technique that lets you know that their logo is a link.

webdesignerdepot.com

I can’t find your bird.

When I run across a new blog that has some great material on it, I usually try and hunt down their Twitter icon. This should not be a hard thing for visitors to find. I’m surprised at how many times I’ve failed to find a twitter link on a blog and then found out later that they actually do have an active account. This mystifies me.

There are plenty of Twitter icons available for free on the web, and finding one that matches your site is a pretty easy task. As far as placement goes, most sites stick them near the upper right-hand corner near the header but, anywhere up top should be fine.

smashingmagazine.com

That was a cool article… now give me more.

If I followed a link to a particular article on your site, this means that I’m already at least somewhat interested in the topic. What better way to keep me around after looking over the article, whether I found it interesting or not, then to conveniently offer me some related material. I will sometimes read 3-4 articles within a site strictly following these links.

This increases my user experience and makes me happy. Now I don’t have to go digging around in categories and search boxes to find similar material. Speaking of search boxes… we’ll save that for another time.

Adding related posts to a site is not hard. If you’re using WordPress, you could literally add this feature to your site in just a few minutes (check out YARPP).

noupe.com

Save me from scrolling.

I often find myself browsing through some quite lengthy lists and articles across the many sites that I frequent. One trend that I really like, especially in these cases, is a “Back to top” option. These little links are great time savers, don’t require much real estate and are extremely convenient after reading “101 Amazing _____ “.

If you’re using WordPress, look into WP To Top. It’s a user-friendly plugin that works quite well.

hongkiat.com

Did I leave a comment?

After reading an interesting article or browsing over a really well put together list, I like to engage the author and other readers by adding my 2¢ through a comment. One thing that I have noticed a lot lately is after hitting the submit button, I’m brought back to the top of the article and with no indication that my comment was ever received. I’ll usually scroll back to the bottom of the page and have a look around only to discover that my comment is not there.

“Maybe my comment will show up later,” is the attitude that I usually have when this happens.

I understand that most of us have implemented some sort of spam protection like Akismet and author approved comments. I think it’s great If you’re wanting to approve my comment first, but give me some kind of heads up. Spam protection is a must these days and unless you enjoy having 3,172 links to (I don’t even want to say the word) - “free blue pills“, you must have some type of filter in place.

So, how can we let our visitors know that their comment did not disappear into thin air? One way would be to have the comment visible to the commenter with a side note letting them know that it did make it through and will be posted pending some author moderation.

bluefaqs.com

Your turn.

What do you do to increase your user experience? Have you seen some techniques being practiced that make you, the user, happy to visit a site? Comment below and let others know!