Three things anyone can do to assess and improve their website

If you are a small business or just starting up, you might be wondering what to focus on when trying to improve the UX of your website. Our designer, Julia has shared her top three things to look out for that will help you assess your current website, as well as know what to do when you’re creating a new one from scratch. 

Know who your users are, and what needs they have.

Who are they?

Pay attention to the different demographics—age, gender, locations (if they are local or international) and their relation to your organisation (repeat customers, first-time visitors) etc. 

What are their needs?

Why are these specific users on the website? What information are they looking for? What do they hope to achieve on your site and what access needs do they have?

From there, think about the various journeys a user will take on your site. How do they find the site? Where do they land when they get there, and how do they decide where to go next? There should be clear paths for users to follow in order to achieve their goals quickly and efficiently. Primary and secondary CTAs must be signposted clearly, with the content on each page following a hierarchical layout that can be scanned easily. Navigation should be consistent throughout. Think about what information should be surfaced where; where it would be most convenient/relevant to users.

Ensure you are meeting basic accessibility requirements

For your website to be accessible to as many users as possible, here are some features you’ll need to take into consideration: 

You’ll have to ensure that there is sufficient contrast between colours so that all text is legible. Colour should never be used as the sole indicator for clickable elements. 

Use linear, hierarchical page layouts which allow users to easily get from one page to another without any frustration.

Ensure the site caters to disabled users by not relying on the use of a mouse to be able to navigate it. Some users exclusively use the keyboard, while others use screen readers; both should be accounted for when testing your site for accessibility.

Clickable areas such as buttons should not demand precision (i.e. be large enough). On mobile as well as desktop, any clickable area needs to be large enough for users to comfortably and confidently carry out their desired actions, without the need for precision (around 44x44px is a good minimum size).

Write in simple language to ensure the information is easy to digest for the user but be sure to give them enough information. You should also make sure to give your content plenty of breathing space—with any images on the website to be accompanied by alt text. 

Test!

A basic way of doing this is to devise a scenario based on a user journey relevant to your site (imagine you’re X, and you want to do Y), and ask someone to carry out this task on your website as you record/watch. 

Watch out for where they go down the wrong path, struggle at any point or get frustrated. At the end, you can ask them to describe their experience, whether they found it easy, annoying, difficult or enjoyable. The more people you do this with, the better you will understand the pain points of your site’s user journey.

This is what you yourself can do to assess the basics of your site with a user-centric approach, but get in touch with us for an in-depth UX review.