How many times have you visited a website only to find its usability is a good as a piece of wet cardboard?
I came across a website the other day, it looked great, really clean and smart. It had a mixture of graphics and the right amount of text to not make me want to get my pillow. Then I came to use the site – infuriating to say the least.
There were broken links, pop-ups galore and the grammar was shocking. I had very high hopes for this website, but in the end I had to close it before I pulled my hair out!
In many cases a website is the very first impression you get of a company and first impressions count – for a lot. Don’t be fooled by the lovely artwork because as aesthetically pleasing as it might be – does it work? If you can’t find the information you are looking for or are bamboozled with things flying all over the screen, then it’s more likely to put you off the whole company and go somewhere else than it is to persist.
The moral of this story is to design a website that is user friendly AND looks good. A website should give visitors the information they need on first load, be clear and simple and a good relationship may blossom, otherwise you may as well not bother.