Website usability and performance should be your priority during development

Website designer is a very general terms used for people creating website designs. However now there are many specializations in this field too and designers are working only on different elements that comprise a website. for example, there are icon designers, animators, mobile app designer, graphics designer etc. The most recent and upcoming branch is of usability design. It is relatively new concept and not many experts are working in it. It basically deals with the user experience and actual usability of the design.

Any type of design requires lot of creativity. But in case of website design usability or actual deployment becomes more important than just creativity. Website is a live, interactive medium and not a painting on the wall. Performance and usability become major factors here. In this article let us look at basic concepts that can improve the usability of your website.

Coding style - While designing a website, you have to consider the responsive feature. A website without responsive approach will not be suitable in today’s world. This type of design requires lot of coding and many other complications. The complete layout is designed and coded using just HTML and CSS code. You need to decide the base for balanced code for flexibility and browser limitations. You will be required to test the code after every change to ensure the layout is taking your desired shape. Updating your code when it is written in symmetrical manner then editing becomes much easier for the developers.

Load time issues - waiting for website opening becomes a very irritating thing for internet users. Apart from the internet speed problems if your website is taking more than 10 seconds to load, then users will leave it for your competitor’s fast loading website. Solution for reducing load time is to offload HTTP request to faster server and keep the assets to minimum. Load time can’t be anticipated at the design phase but it should be tested properly before launching the website. Design issues such as broken background, poor color scheme or complicated navigation can also make user leave your website. You must look at the performance and speed aspect of the website right from the design and try to use optimized and only most required assets in the code.

While your website is under development, you can try the Google PageSpeed tool to check the loading time. Report from this tool will tell you about areas to check for speed issues. You can then fix those issues and re-check. Care must be taken while using external JS or CSS code scripts. They are often written to address all browsers and codes could be lengthy. You can minify them and then include in your code to avoid any waste of time while loading.

Planning for Future Update - Website is the mirror of real life business or work. So obviously its content or even few functions are expected to change as time progress. Keeping your focus on the new project and expected update requirement can make you a successful UI designer. You can enhance the usability of the website design by making some provision for updates.

Interactivity is the basis of usability - Internet is a two way communication medium. So your website must have some provision to get information from your visitor. Web form is the right method to collect user information for login, signup or just some feedback. Forms play an important role in establishing a communication channel with the user and so are the integral parts of website usability level. Forms must fit nicely in the chosen design and should not appear as foreign elements patched up after whole design is done.

Performance Vs usability are two basic but complementary requirements for any website. As a designer your job is not just to create a great design but make it usable from the visitor’s point of view. A design which takes of performance and load time is the best one.

If you want more web development tips, tricks from a web development experts, do get in touch with us.