How to Design a User-Friendly Website: 10 Useful Tips
Tags: website
Published: 2024-01-22 00:25:17

Having a website is an effective way to have an online presence and attract a relevant audience to grow your business.

It allows you to generate awareness about your brand and make useful information available to your potential customers.

However, for your website to generate more business for you, it's important to ensure that its visitors don't have a hard time exploring it.

Having a website that's not user-friendly not only prevents you from retaining your visitors but also severely affects your company's overall reputation.

Therefore, you should strive to offer a seamless experience through your website and facilitate effortless access to valuable information through it.

Here's how you can design a user-friendly website for your target audience:

## 1. Set Clear Goals
The first step to creating a user-friendly website is being clear with respect to what you wish to achieve through it.

Businesses generally launch a website to showcase their solutions and tell the world about what they have to offer.

However, that's not the only purpose a website can serve. A website can help you educate your target audience and make it possible for them to make informed buying decisions.

For this, it's important to be familiar with the preferences of the intended audience and put their needs first when designing your website.

When you know what interests your potential visitors, you'll be able to come up with a better content hierarchy and information structure.

## 2. Keep It Simple
A common mistake people often make is that they make their websites too complicated, hoping to [make the visitors stay](https://optinmonster.com/11-hacks-to-keep-visitors-on-your-pages-longer/).

The purpose of your website is to facilitate visitors' access to relevant information. So, you should ensure that it's easier for your visitors to find the pages that serve their purpose.

Your website's design should resonate with your brand and cater to the needs of your audience. It's everything that you need to [attract relevant traffic](https://aioseo.com/10-methods-to-generate-organic-traffic/) and [generate more leads](https://formidableforms.com/10-ways-to-generate-more-leads-on-your-site/) for your business.

## 3. Create a Sitemap
Creating a sitemap helps you design a user-friendly website. It enables you to devise a well-thought-out information structure that helps visitors locate the content representing different categories.

A sitemap is a rough sketch that showcases the hierarchy of your site's pages and makes it possible for you to display relevant information in a presentable way.

It paves the way for the design process and helps you identify critical mistakes beforehand, which minimizes the likelihood of you offering a clunky experience through your website.

## 4. Come Up With a Well-Thought-Out Site Layout
A site's layout encompasses the placement of visual elements on a webpage or their position in a particular way.

A site's layout makes it possible for you to maneuver page elements in a way that offers a seamless user experience.

In order to engage your target audience and [capture quality leads](https://wpforms.com/how-to-get-more-leads-from-your-wordpress-site/), it's essential that you point your visitors in the right direction and showcase information that appeals to them the most.

A smart website layout gets the job done and amplifies your design to cater to the latest web design trends, making the best-suited interactions possible.

## 5. Be Smart With Menu Placement
Thinking outside of the box and trying new ways is a good thing. However, when it comes to menu placement for your website, sticking to the industry's best practices is a viable approach.

The visitors you want to attract are used to a particular pattern in which the websites in your respective niche place their menus. So, try not to reinvent the wheel and take inspiration from what's already working.

## 6. Leverage Logical Navigation
An easy-to-navigate website plays a critical role in helping you offer a seamless user experience. It allows your visitors to access required information with ease, making them keep coming back for more.

When we talk about your navigation, don't think about how you want it to be. You should be people-centric and consider how the intended audience would want to access the information published.

## 7. Add a Search Feature
Adding a search bar is a great way to make your website user-friendly. It allows your visitors to find the information they want and access it with ease without having to explore the entire website.

No matter how well-thought-out your website's structure is, adding a search feature goes a long way and helps you engage your visitors, especially when you have hundreds of pages.

Adding a search bar may save a lot of time for your visitors when it comes to finding useful content and make them satisfied with the experience you offer.

## 8. Consider Device Optimization
When it comes to accessing your website, people may prefer different devices. And a user-friendly website is one that caters to the diverse preferences of its visitors.

People may use desktops, smartphones, and tablets to access your website. You should put this information to good use and ensure that your website is compatible with different devices and screen sizes.

This enables you to offer a seamless navigation experience, which in turn helps you [reduce your bounce rate](https://www.monsterinsights.com/how-to-reduce-bounce-rate/) significantly.

## 9. Reduce Load Time
When your pages take forever to load, it may affect the experience you offer your visitors. It's reported that a 1-second delay in your page load time may cause an [11%](https://www.isitwp.com/boost-wordpress-performance-speed/) loss in page views.

The quicker your pages load, the faster your visitors will be able to access the information that they need.

Therefore, it's highly recommended that you improve your website's performance and identify the issues that may cause your pages to take more time to load.

The use of unoptimized images, JavaScript issues, code bulking, absence of a CDN, excessive use of plugins, improper [selection of a hosting service](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wordpress-hosting/), and displaying ads in abundance are a few of the reasons that may affect your website's load time.

## 10. Test Your Website
It's highly recommended that you test your website before the launch. No matter how careful you are, mistakes are bound to happen. So, conducting a usability test may help you ensure user friendliness.

You can ask your team to visit your site and rate their experience, pointing out the areas that require improvement.

This paves the way for you to offer an amazing user experience and [get more eyeballs](https://rafflepress.com/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/) in your respective industry.

## Final Words
There you have it: the ten things you need to consider to design a user-friendly website. If you've been wanting to offer a seamless experience to people visiting your site and [grow your business](https://trustpulse.com/growth-hacking-strategies/), the recommendations in this article may come in handy.