Website Usability – 5 Useful Tips

This is the difference between regular graphic design and web design. As you design your website it's important to consider usability issues, even over aesthetic designs. You may have designed a stunning and unique button and spent hours fine tuning its appearance, but if your visitors won't understand where that button links to, you've wasted your time. Here are a few useful tips to making your free website templates design usable and functional.

1. Don't Navigate Mysteriously - Yes, I referring to that same button you designed and fell in love with, that is absolutely useless in terms of usability. Mystery buttons are buttons that use icons or pictures to represent their purpose. The danger is that your users will be left wondering what the icon represents and what you mean. Aside from being vague, you have to remember that the internet is an international arena and different countries have different cultures, and different images mean different things in different cultures. Use a language that is clear cut and avoid confusion.
2. Good Page Titles - The page title is the text displayed on the title bar of your web browser (the bar is usually blue). You web page title should define the contents of that page. One of the most prevalent mistakes webmasters make is writing the website's name before the page content description (title). The best way to write a title is to include the page contents before the website name. This method makes it easier for web crawlers to identify the content on your site, as titles are one of the most important elements in optimizing for search engines.
3. Contact Information. Don't forget to add your contact information. This is also important if you want to convey a serious and trustworthy reputation for your website. Adding contact information boosts your credibility and lets your visitors know that there is a live person, or presence behind your website and provides a sense of substance to your existence in the virtual world.
4. Site Map - The site map is particularly important for large sites, but can often be useful for medium and small sites as well, especially if you're creating complex navigation and a sophisticated web design in your free website templates. Your site map will list and include all the links to all of your web pages in accordance to hierarchy. Aside from helping lost users find their way across your website, your site map also helps search engine crawlers find and index all of your pages. A useful little tool, so take advantage of it.
5. Standardized Markup - Use standardized mark-up, whether in creating tables, proper line breaks and anything else relating to the construction and structure of your website. By using the standardized markup you are ensuring your website's proper accessibility and usability.
6. Legible Fonts - I'm not against using colorful and unique font designs, but if you're going to include chunks of texts, make sure that your font is not distracting. There are several standard fonts such as Ariel, Times New Roman, Calibri, David, Verdana and similar fonts that are often used for long texts and are easy on the eye.

Don't reinvent the wheel. Stand on the shoulders of giants who have already tried and tested these relatively new waters, you may find it easier to stay afloat this way. Check out competitor sites. Learn from others. Come back and stay creative.