5 Easy Tips To Increase User Experience
Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by Shawn Ramsey in Articles
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.
I cruise by a lot 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 guidance.
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 thing that your visitors assume you have administered into your site is the clickable logo. Let’s say that you just got through reading an article deep within a website and then wanted to check out the homepage, the first thing that most people do is click the logo. If nothing happens, then that really only leaves a few 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’re not, it’s something you should really consider. WebDesignerDepot takes this idea a step further and adds a cool mouseover that lets you know that their logo is a link.
I can’t find your bird.
When I run across a new blog that has some exceptional material on it, I usually try and hunt down their Twitter icon to begin following them. This should not be a hard thing for visitors to locate. It’s simple, make this an easy find if you want more followers. 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 in the upper right-hand corner near the header, but anywhere above the fold 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 post, whether I found it interesting or not, then to throw some related material my way. I will sometimes read 3-4 articles within a site strictly following these links.
This increases my user experience which in turn makes me happy. Now I don’t have to go digging around in categories and search boxes to find something similar. 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 add this feature to your site in just a few minutes (check out YARPP).
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 especially like when I find myself 1/4 mile down the page, 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 (fill in the blank) “.
If you’re using WordPress, look into WP To Top. It’s a user-friendly plugin that works quite well.
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 made it through. 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.
I understand that most of us have implemented some sort of spam protection like Akismet and author approved comments. 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. I think it’s great If you’re wanting to approve my comment first, but give me some kind of heads up.
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.
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!
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4 Responses to “5 Easy Tips To Increase User Experience”
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Vald
08. Dec, 2009
Why do you hunt down the Twitter icon? It seems like, from what you are saying, that you visit blogs just to find Twitter icons.
Please make interesting content and do not put the Twitter icon, i’ll still visit your blog :)
Shawn Ramsey
08. Dec, 2009
@Vald - I only make an attempt to find their Twitter Icon if they have really caught my attention with an exceptional article, as I stated. This way I can get more great info from them via their tweets. I visit all of these sites in an effort to learn from others, not to hunt down Twitter icons.
Phil
18. Dec, 2009
Great information, thank you!
Ev
03. Jan, 2010
I think back to top elements only add clutter. It’s so really easy to grab the scroller and move it up, or even simply hit the Home button on the keyboard. If browsers implemented a back to top button — i would probably use it.