Web Site Usability
3. Is Your Website USABLE?
Does your website conform to common conventions?
1. Navigation.
Your navigation should be on the top or side (usually left) and be in the same place on every page.
2. Pages.
You should have at least these pages: home page, about page, privacy policy page, frequently asked questions page, and a sitemap page if you have a larger site.
3. Links.
Internal links (those that link to other pages on your website) should open in the same browser window. Otherwise, the "back" button will not work for them to reverse navigate, which is the way LOTS of people go back!
External links (those that link to other websites) should open in a new browser window. This way, your website will still be open on in a browser window beneath (or a previous tab for newer browsers).
You WANT THEM to be able to get back to your website, don’t you?
4. Security.
You should at least have a privacy policy (regarding what you do with email addresses…) and if you accept credit cards on your own domain, you had better have a security certificate for your domain installed on your website. This has to be done at the server root level by a server administrator.
Does your site download quickly? Test it! About 50% of the country is still using dialup and some broadband services are not much better.
You are going to have just a few seconds at most to grab attention, and a slow loading website is not going to help you. Be sure that your main page loads fast.
Next time you have the opportunity to view your website (or call someone and ask them to time it for you) from a dialup connection, do so. You may need to re-optimize your images so your pages load faster.
You’ll need to find a happy medium between the visual quality of your images and the speed at which they load.
How USABLE is your Web site? Grade it!
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