Web design errors can lead to communication problems and navigational issues. The following information will help you work with a web design team and clear up any current problems with your webpage layouts.
Locating Information
If a visitor cannot find the information they are seeking, they will jump to another site. Also, if a categorical topic does not accurately describe the content on a webpage, or is improperly organized, it leads to frustration and increased bounce rates.
Therefore, usability testing can help in creating a site layout that makes sense to its users. According to the website, usability.gov, usability testing allows web designers to discover web design errors before a website is coded. The earlier you identify possible issues, the less costly they are to fix.
The Advantages of Testing the Usability of Your Website’s Design
The results of a usability test will allow you to:
- Find out if the participants were able to complete certain tasks on a website
- Identify how long participants took to complete specific functions
- Find out the level of user satisfaction after navigating the website
- Learn what changes are needed to enhance user performance and satisfaction
- Analyze user performance to see if it meets usability goals
Using A/B Testing to Reduce Web Design Errors
You can also get this type of feedback with A/B testing. Also known as bucket testing or split testing, A/B testing is a method used for testing two versions of a webpage to see which performs the best.
Therefore, A/B testing is basically defined as a test that compares two different webpage layouts. These two layouts are presented to random users. This allows the tester to determine statistically, which platform to use to support a legal firm’s lead conversion rate and traffic flow.
Poor Search Results
Many websites experience poor search results because a website does not match a user’s queries.
In some instances, ads, which are intermingled with the search results, leap out at the users and surprise them. This often causes them to veer away from the site.
Therefore, it helps to review the search logs to check on search behaviors so you can determine what searches are successful and what searches turn up poor results.
Content Tagging
To prevent poor search results and website design errors, website administrators use content tagging to improve a site’s content and provide easier access to information.
How Web Developers Use Content Tags
The content added to a website is posted chronologically by default. Therefore, web administrators use content tags to classify web content, based on the similarity of the text.
Articles that contain specific content tags are linked, categorically, to other articles with the same tag. As you can see, this helps organize a website so people can expand on their knowledge of a topic or a service..
However, don’t get the use of content tags confused with using category tags. Category tags group web posts into categorical subjects. This allows the web administrator to identify a category and group the content under the appropriate subject.
While category tags represent subgroups of similar contents, content tags attach words to specific content. A category may make up several topics while a content tag is assigned to individual items of content.
As you can see, the use of metadata and the organization of your website for increasing usability gives you an edge competitively. Therefore, you need to work with a web design team that understands your special needs in this regard.
The web design team you choose should also understand the principles of responsive design and how to set up web pages that are easy to access and read.
For example, some websites overwhelm visitors with information, which causes them to look elsewhere. Again, this is due to a lack of organization and leaves a user struggling to find what they want to read. Dense walls of text make it difficult to scan a page. That is important to remember, as research shows that website visitors scan pages rather than read them.
What the Research Shows
A survey by the Nielsen Norman Group revealed that users pick up words as they scan over a website. About 80% of the participants scan text while the remaining percentage read a webpage word-by-word.
Therefore, web pages must display scannable text, using:
- Hypertext links, variations in colors and typeface, and highlighted links
- Meaningful subheadings
- Bulleted lists
- Bolded keywords
Also, users will skip over content that conveys more than one idea. Therefore, it is best to limit each paragraph to a singular concept.
The inverted pyramid style of writing is often preferred as well. This style begins with a conclusion. Therefore, the most fundamental info is placed in the lead paragraph while the remaining details are arranged by order of importance with the least important details placed at the end.
In addition, the article or content should contain half the word count than what one would read conventionally.
Contact Attorney Marketing Online to Improve Your Website’s Design
If you need assistance with your legal website’s design and want to avoid the costly mistakes tied to website design errors and oversights, contact Attorney Marketing Online today. Phone (888) 992-9529 or (323) 433-6529 for further details now.
