Today I would like to talk about the most common usability mistakes. Why is it so important? Better usability makes your customers happy and satisfied. It means they will come back to your website which is especially important when we talk about sales. No one wants to spend time and effort to search for something on your website. So the website should be clear, intuitive and understandable.

Inconvenient Clickable Areas

You should always keep in mind that our hands are not always precise. If the clickable areas are too small we cannot catch them. It takes effort. The more effort it takes — the less happy we are using the website. That is simple. Make the clickable areas large enough. Do not make your users spend time trying to click the needed link.

Annoying Registration

Yes, registration can be annoying. If you want your customers to submit information about them, don`t ask for the information you do not need. The registration form should not be too long. No one enjoys filling it in.

Another registration problem is the reduction of functionality. Some features may be unaccessible for unregistered users. Are you sure that you do not hide the essential features behind the registration? It surely reduces the number of customers on your website.

Uninformative Content Layout

Users hardly ever read websites from the beginning to the end. You cannot help that. They are looking for the information they are interested in, and they do not want to lose time. So, the best thing you can do is to arrange the content in a more convenient way. It is a good idea that you create several points of focus. You can enforce them by using special colors, fonts, or images. You can eliminate unnecessary information. Your content should be short but highly informative and effective.

Excess Pagination

Pagination is splitting into several pages. If your website has a lot of content (let`s say your store has a great many of various items) — it is quite ok. But if you use pagination deliberately to increase your page views — it is a big mistake. It is inconvenient to read the content that is split into several pages but it could have been just one page. Things like that push the customers aside.

Outdated Links

Sometimes it happens that websites change domains or they are reorganized. It means that links that lead to them will not work properly. The page will not be found or an error will occur. Things like that make your website look neglected. It is better to check the links and be sure that everything works in a proper way.

No Searching Tool

There are customers that surely know what they want to find on your website and they don`t want to read all the content. They need a search box as it is time-consuming to learn the structure of your website. What you can do is to make their routine a bit easier and implement a search box on your website.

Here are my recommendations to improve the usability of your website. You are welcome to use them and share your opinion in the comments section below.

Have a nice day!

Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — best online documentation tool for SaaS vendors