Five Things You Should Check On Your Brand New Website

So you just got home from your meeting with the web designers. They’ve shown you a couple of design mock-ups that all looked really good. Bright colors, enticing images and cool animation. They convinced you of its usability and effectiveness and how the user experience will be a great one. They’re probably right. But, that doesn’t mean the design they made was flawless. Here are a couple of things you should look at to make sure your website is designed properly.

Unidentifiable Links

Links are objects that direct you to a different web page. This web page could be inside your website, or outside. Links can be images or text that is within your website’s content.

Links should be easy to identify – especially if they are linked to something important. The most common identifying marker of a link is the underline. A simple underline can give emphasis to a link, which may be the deciding factor for the visitor’s actions.

A Way to Communicate

The main purpose of a website is to communicate. This communication must work both ways. As the owner, you can communicate your services, products, or opinions and thoughts to your website’s visitors. Visitors should also be able to communicate with you with their suggestions, feedback, and most importantly, their transactions!

Aside from posting your office or business contact information or address, you can also put up an online form. These forms can be usually found on the Contact page where users can fill up a form that can be sent to the website’s owners or administrators. Online forms provide comfort and ease, and sometimes anonymity to users who want to share information with you. Make sure that your website has ways for the users to communicate with you easily.

Readability

Most modern designs have variable font sizes that add to the design’s look and appeal. As good-looking as some of them may be, some fonts are just too small for some people to read. Colors can also add to the readability issues.

Make sure that the font sizes and colors are properly set so that they are all easy on the eyes. This ensures optimal readability for your website.

Loading Time

A website’s loading time usually dictates if users will stay or leave. Websites that take forever to load probably do not have a lot of visitors. Too much images or video can affect your website’s loading time.

If your website could not help having a lot of images or video, make sure that the file sizes are optimized for web viewing. If your website loads in a timely manner, visitors won’t get bored and look for a different site.

Limited Functionality

There are some websites that require a user to register first before getting additional access. This method creates a line of communication between the user and the owner. This is good. However, if you, as the website owner, limit too much website functionality, users can get agitated and look for a website similar to yours instead.

There are still a lot of users who would opt not to register themselves because they want privacy or simply just do not want the hassle of filling out an online registration form. Make sure that you provide enough quality content and functionality that do not require user registration. This maximizes user experience wherein both of you will benefit from.