In General, Tips Mar 17, 200931
7 Common Web Usability Problems
However great you may think your site looks, If it’s difficult to use people won’t come back. If you want to have a successful website, then you have to make sure it’s designed around the requirements of your users. As designers and developers we are sometimes just too close to our sites to see their problems. In this article we have showcased 7 common usability issues that are often overlooked or simply ignored.
Say what it does
Anybody who visits your site should be able to understand what it does within a few seconds. Be mindful that the majority of your visitors will probably not enter via the home page. Write a good tag line explaining what your website does, include it next to your logo or somewhere prominent, this will help get your message across to new visitors.
Who gets it right: Twitter.com
Further reading:
Turning Visitors into Users
How to Write a Strong Value Proposition
Tips on Making Great Taglines
Keep homepages clutter free
Be ruthless when deciding what needs to be on your homepage. Just include the necessities, when someone visits this page it should be instantly obvious what your site is and what their next step should be.
Who gets it right: Ning
Further reading:
The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines
UX matters – Home Page Design
Be consistent and use conventions
Try to use standardized ways of performing functions. That new jQuery menu you just made may be cool but it might just confuse your users. Try to keep the user experience consistent, keep navigation elements in the same format and position at all times. Having to continually search for key elements every time they go to a new page is going to frustrate your visitors.
Who gets it right: Amazon.com
Further reading:
Design With Web Conventions
Top 5 Web Conventions
Design with Consistency
Why Consistency is Critical
Navigation
Navigation is perhaps the most important element of any web design. Tabs can be a really effective means of primary navigation, they are also commonplace so everybody knows how they work. Whatever form of primary navigation you choose make sure its consistent across your site. If you have a big website that’s well categorized you should use this to your advantage, include a prominent list or related categories or other categories in that section.
Who gets it right: About.com
Further reading:
CSS Showcase – CSS Navigation Menus
10 Brilliant Multi Level Navigation Menu Techniques
50 Beautiful And User-Friendly Navigation Menus
webdesignpractices – Local Navigation
Create apple.com-like breadcrumb using simple CSS
Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful
Response and load times
Most users will not tolerate a slow website, if you ignore this issue you are going to lose a lot of potential page views / visits / customers. You want to aim for your pages to respond in under a second and ideally in one tenth of a second.
Who gets it right: Digg.com
Further reading:
Optimizing Page Load Times
15 Quick Ways to Shrink Page Load Times
Pingdom Free Tools – Full page test
Let your users search
Sounds obvious but its surprising how many sites don’t have a search box or hide it away somewhere. Many web users are search-dominant and use search as their primary method of navigating, if you don’t have a search facility or it doesn’t work as it should, they wont be sticking around.
Who gets it right: Apple.com
Further reading:
Sphinx – Free open-source SQL full-text search engine
Google Site Search Implementation
Test early and often
Everybody should be usability testing their website. Don’t assume just because you know how to use it that your site doesn’t have any problems. Testing doesn’t have to be expensive either, start with your family and friends watch them use your site. Ask them to perform certain tasks (like signing up or posting a comment) and take notes. It’s amazing how much you can learn this way, when you have identified a problem fix it and test again.
31 Comments
Mar 17, 2009
[...] Obviously the goal is a harmonious balance between the two. I was reviewing a post over on Design Reviver this morning which outlined this struggle in terms of Usability Problems and good design [...]
Mar 17, 2009
Excellent article, I didn’t know for some of these resources.
Thanks for including my tutorial
Mar 17, 2009
The simple things in web design, sometimes overlooked !
Mar 17, 2009
I thinks it’s especially common with personal blogs that people forget they don’t have that much content. They get sidebars and widgets and all sorts of crazy stuff instead of just focusing on the posts.
Mar 17, 2009
An 8th problem — The Halloween effect: using white and red text on a black background. This is very hard to read.
Mar 18, 2009
Oh! Thanks for sharing this concern with us. I think it would be best for us to be aware of such things here online.
Mar 18, 2009
Many of these things are often overlooked. This is a great checklist for us! Thanks.
Mar 18, 2009
very true and self explaining images
Mar 18, 2009
This is sweet – I have encountered all of these issues.
Regarding decluttering the homepage, i thing a short and well-thought video is worth a thousand words and this is what i plan on doing on my own home.
Thanks for this article.
Mar 18, 2009
i struggle often (read:every day) at my in house design job with the clutter free home page. i don’t understand the fear of white space.
Mar 18, 2009
Good article with some helpful tips and examples. I would say that the first two tips, “Say what it does and “Keep the homepage clutter free” are perhaps easier said than done when you are designing a site for a large corporation with diverse products, customers, and goals.
Thanks for the post…
Mar 19, 2009
I would say that “Say what it does” and “Response and load times” would be the most important items on this list and that “Navigation” would come in third.
Thanks for a nice article.
Mar 19, 2009
The art of building a website that converts a visitor into a lead, is an art. You make some very valid points, thanks for the great post.
Mar 22, 2009
[...] Good Design Reviver article. [...]
Mar 22, 2009
This will help my future designs more user friendly..tanks for the post
Mar 23, 2009
Gr8 post! Summed up : “don’t make me think!” (Steve Krug)
Mar 24, 2009
[...] 7 Common Web Usability Problems [...]
Mar 25, 2009
[...] more at the immediate – advanced designer but some useful articles no less. Their article on 7 Common Web Usability Problems feature our class’s community portal of choice, Ning! As a good example of keeping your [...]
Mar 29, 2009
So true… test test and re-test… get as much feed back from a broad range of people. Page load times… always a critical thing to keep in mind when designing a website, especially in todays on demand world.
Apr 2, 2009
[...] 7 Common Web Usability Problems [...]
Apr 5, 2009
[...] Common web usability problems: http://designreviver.com/tips/7-common-web-usability-problems/ [...]
Apr 5, 2009
[...] 7 common web usability problems — Design Reviver [...]
Apr 6, 2009
Yes! Say what it does! Thank you! Why do so many people try to “wow” you with a site without ever giving you any indication of what their business does or what services they offer? People don’t come to your site to see how cool it is (unless that’s your business), they come there for information. Give it to them!
Apr 18, 2009
[...] Design Reviver [...]
Jun 4, 2009
Consistencies can do wonders for a website. Also, having a style guide can be a life saver when you have multiple authors.
Jun 7, 2009
[...] 7 Common Web Usability Problems Interessant artikel over 7 vaak voorkomende usabilityproblemen. [...]
Jul 7, 2009
Its great to be aware of usability when designing a website, thanks for the pointers.
Aug 18, 2009
I couldn’t agree more with you. Navigation is the key to build a good website. No complicated animations etc.
Nice clear design and user friendly menus. Where people can find the information they are looking for with 2-3 clicks. If users are finding your website useful they are coming back.
I have listed here a few things what i think are important when you are designing a website for your business.
Sep 6, 2009
[...] Read more: 7 Common Web Usability Problems | Design Reviver [...]
Nov 8, 2009
[...] Web Usability – 7 common problems. [...]
Mar 23, 2011
Good tips. But about search you’re rather incorrect.
You wrote:
“Many web users are search-dominant and use search as their primary method of navigating”
In fact if you have more than 5%-10% people using your search function then there’s probably something wrong with your navigation. Of course this doesn’t count for stuff like Google :p
Not that many people are search-dominant. Only a few categories really like search functions: computer geeks, engineers, …
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