Every company should design their digital product navigation and content with usability principles in mind. These principles allow your product to be understandable and simple. It will help your site users to know where they are, where they are going, how to get back, and where they’ve been. It makes it easy to convey your unique selling proposition and gets users to take the action you intend.
What usability principles are we talking about? Usability systems are defined by their focus on three user actions:
Tasks
60% of a system’s usability is task-focused.
Lets’ take your website as an example, to make users online experience easy and useful, you should customize your digital content and architecture to suit your different users’ needs. With the greater weight of usability focused on each user group tasks, you need to have a sturdy and scalable navigation foundation, which starts on your Home/Landing screen. Each user or user group should be able to navigate from here with ease to their appropriate destination.
Subsequent screens should take on a logical flow and structure as needed from your Home screen. This not only includes menus, but entry, exits, and action points.
It is also very helpful to have the same look and feel (aesthetic and behaviour) throughout the site, which enables your users to easily feel at home and to do exactly what they intend to do. As an example, what this means is that, you should not have navigation menus showing up horizontally on one screen and then vertically on another screen.
The important activities users want to execute should be in front of them, easy to find and simple to carry out.
All your web screens should be much the same from the user’s perspective; they share interaction techniques and they have similar layouts. These similarities are in fact good because they allow users a measure of transfer of skills from one part of your site to the next; and even from site to site. Users despise when sites use navigation interfaces that are drastically different from the ones they have come to expect from the majority of other sites.
Consistency
25% of your website is based on consistency.
Websites that score high on usability usually have high consistency.
How do you keep your site consistent? The navigation system should on most part be in the same place on every screen and have the same format. Users will get confused and frustrated if links and information appear and disappear on a whim. It’s like driving on a street that suddenly ends and starts two blocks off another street. Having driven the street for the first time, you are now lost. This can be frustrating. No doubt your users will feel the same way.
Presentation
15% of the information on your site is attributed to presentation.
Although presentation is somewhat important, do not sacrifice usability for a pleasing visual design. A good design does not mean your site is usable.
In assessing your website usability needs, some of the elements you should take into consideration include (but not limited to):
Structural navigation design
Branding
Using style sheet for cost saving measures
Appropriate use of links, buttons, advertising banners, logo, etc.
Site logo links to home page
Site search engine and site map
Accessibility
Test for different browser resolutions, devices, and operating systems
Test for connectivity speeds
Need analysis
Expert critique and user testing
User Interface design
User profiles and task analysis
Artifact analysis
Content inventory
Wireframes and prototypes
When you design your website, it is good to address the following user concerns:
Ease of use
How long does it take users to find information on each page?
Do users find it easy or do they get lost going from one section of the site to another?
Control
Does the information have intuitiveness?
Does the site provide a clear path of what users need to fulfill?
Efficiency
Is the site content organized to simplify its usage?
At first glance, can users make informative decisions about what each portion of the site does without second-guessing?
Is the site simple to read?
As a conclusion, a person who architects or builds a house does not have the same responsibility as the interior designer but they both have the same objectives. So don’t just involve your designer with your product design plans. Get everyone involved: product, design, research, marketing, engineering, etc. This will create alignment and everyone will benefit from the design outcome.