Is your website user-friendly? Don't answer right away...think about it. If you were involved in the development, it may be hard for you to have a clear perspective. Now really, is your website user-friendly?
If it is great! If you not sure then perform this test...or better yet as a someone who has not spent a lot of time on your site to perform this test. Go to the site as a visitor and browse through the entire thing, clicking on all the pages and all the links as the site leads you. While your doing this, ask yourself these questions;
1. Do I have to think?
2. Does the site lead me through it or do I get stranded in the midst of clicks?
If the answers are 1.) No and 2.) Yes...then you are off to a great start. Research has proven that visitors do not want to have to think when they are on a website. They do not want to think "what page was I on when I saw that link I wanted to click on..." They want all the buttons to be available from every page and they want a clean and legibly designed site. your site should be taking visitors through a path that you have created. I idea is to get the user to buy something or make contact with your company. Depending on where they come into your site, there should be a path that leads them to purchase. if you don't know what the pat it...that is a good place to start work on your site. A visitor should not come into a site a find the one element of information s/he is seeking and then be stranded to click-off the site entirely. The idea is to bring them in for the piece of info they are seeking and then lure them to other enticing information (your service/product) and then appeal to their emotion until they keep clicking through to the shopping cart and click "buy now". At any given point a user enters your site...this path should be clearly laid out for the visitor -- DON'T make them think! :-)
6 Other Tips for a User-Friendly Site:
1. Is the main menu available from every page?
2. Is there a short contact form/contact information on each page?
3. Is there a call to action on each page?
4. Do have a click-to-chat feature?
5. Is your shopping cart easy to find, view, operate and labeled as secure?
6. Is your customer service qualified to follow-up order and verify customer satisfaction.
The click-to-chat feature is becoming quite popular, especially for those of us who are impatient and want answers quickly. A more detailed post regarding click-to-chat features will come this week.
Thanks for stopping by! Do yo have any comments?
Amy
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