Friday 3 August 2012

Website Usability and User Expectations

It is imperative to do a usability testing before launching a website. Professionals working at website design Sydney companies do a usability heuristic evaluation. This is compared against a list of guidelines and widely accepted principles. Ideally, this should be done by professional usability experts. If this is not possible, then you should conduct your company’s site heuristic evaluation yourself. This is not an ideal solution- but it is better than not doing anything at all.

According to Sydney web design professionals, heuristic evaluation should not offer more than is required for the user to complete a task. The more the task, the greater the user must filter the noise. A feature that is peripheral or unrelated to the main content can confuse users who are new to the website. If there is a compulsory requirement for advanced features, it is recommended to place them in a separate web page. Furthermore, the website must also look good. Removal of extra features does not mean decreasing the beauty quotient of the site. Visual cues can be present to make the site attractive. It must be mentioned that great design is an ideal combination of looks and functionality.

High standards and consistency are the two pillars of great website design. Industry standards state that the local navigation bar should be displayed on the left side of the web page. Users find it annoying if it is located on the right side. Another common standard is that a hyperlink is represented by a blue underlined text. If you change the color, or remove the underline, users will be confused.

A website design Sydney Company lays stress on the display of error, its prevention and subsequent recovery. An accurate description of the error should be provided-along with the possible solutions that can be implemented to recover from the error.

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