Websites that don’t function well and are difficult to navigate make it tough for users to make a purchase or find out what they need. Frequently it is hard to figure out what action to perform with the information provided on a site. It is vital to provide your audience with an indication of the type of ‘action’, if any, you prefer them to make.

As long as the link directing viewers to your purchase page is hard to find, you won’t sell very much. User-friendliness is key when it comes to designing a website — be sure it is simple to understand and easily navigable, with plainly marked links and tabs.

Users are less likely to take action if their attention is distracted by something on the page. The number of pages users must navigate between the point of entry and the point of sale should be as few as possible.

Navigating the site and using the hyperlinks ought to be user-friendly. The navigation section ought to be plainly delineated from the page’s primary content. In addition, anyone browsing your site should be able to locate the information they need in three clicks or less. Ask a group of individuals to proceed through your site with assigned tasks, and observe if they experience any issues. Also ask them for a report on how user-friendly they found it to be. Next, perform any modifications according to what they observed and reported.

A number of website owners make the mistake of choosing style over actual content. Flash, as an example. When Flash is used to excess, it may require extra time to load, and lead your viewers to grow impatient. More important still, an excess of distracting features will actually detract from your message. The purpose of style is to augment and highlight your site’s main message, rather than take away the viewer’s attention. Video, animation, and other forms of graphics all have their place within the content delivery stream. In your website, however, your main message shouldn’t be lost.

A different issue happens if you construct an attractive and instructive site, and then neglect it. The information becomes stale in just a few months. Countless outdated online sites exist, and anyone visiting one of these outdated websites is bound to feel let down and will rarely make a return trip to that site.

Make sure your website is validated. When a website doesn’t “validate”, it means you must rely to a degree on the browser’s “estimate” of how it should work, and not all browsers are equally accommodating. Without trying out your site in each of the usual browsers, you have no way of knowing exactly how it looks on the monitors of your target viewers.

Ease of Access. Make your content easy to understand for a large number of users. Place links to your main content immediately below your site’s header image so that those using screen readers can jump straight to what they’re looking for without having to listen to the navigation on every page. Don’t forget to test your site to ensure that colorblind people can easily use it.

Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a copy writer for InfoServe Media, LLC. InfoServe Media is a Houston web site designer and web hosting company. If you would rather make a Do-It-Yourself website, InfoServe Media also offers a way to create a site yourself with a very powerful and easy to use site builder. They also provide domain registration, search engine optimization (SEO) and more.

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