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Assess your website usability

Web users want information that is easy to find, quick to read and up to date. Well-organized, quality content is more important than a knockout design. Following are some questions you can ask to see if your website is easy to use.

When accessing your site for the first time your customers should be able to quickly understand how to use it. Is your navigation intuitive and consistent throughout the site?

1. Do your navigation tools ensure that a visitor can always know:

   • where he is
   • where he has been
   • where he can go, and
   • how to get home?
     
     
2. Can a visitor get to information he’s after within three clicks of the mouse?
   
   
3. Is the terminology used for titles, labels and content links familiar to the user and not governmental jargon?
   
   
4. Is the site organized according to the kinds of tasks the visitor may want to accomplish?
   
   
5. Some typical rules to help make content easy to scan are to use:

• one idea per sentence
• two to 5 sentences per paragraph
• no more than 15 words per sentence
• bulleted lists
• short, familiar words and action verbs
• a reasonably short line of text
• Is your content written for the web?

6. Is a visitor likely to find broken links or dead ends while traveling through your site?
   
   
7. Have you optimized page-loading on the site for those with dial-up access?
   
   
8. Do the graphic elements support the content or is it just there for splash?
   
   
9. Speaking of splash…you don’t introduce your site with a ‘splash’ page do you?
   
   
10. Do you have consistent headers, footers, backgrounds and color schemes?
    
    
11. Is your website maintained and updated on a regular basis to provide freshness, assurance of working links and accuracy?

You may enjoy reading more about how we build effective websites or feel free to complete more of our free assessments.