Visitors to an organisation’s website will not be instantly won over by its layout and design. Colours, pictures and fonts may be alluring, but these elements alone are not going to generate sales leads for that business. Businesses need to evaluate the landing pages of visitors to their site, the way that visitors will examine the site’s content, and how they will navigate the site to find what they are searching for.

There is nothing more frustrating than searching a website for something that is difficult to find. A website needs to have content that has been thoughtfully written with the user’s intent in mind, as well as a logical navigation path that allows visitors to meet their needs easily and intuitively. If they cannot figure out what to do next within seconds, a site redesign may be required.

Ways to ensure your website meets user needs

• Develop Customer Scenarios: consider the tasks that visitors will be looking to complete when visiting the website. Ensure that links can be easily located to direct visitors to the webpage that they are looking for.
• Concept Testing: respondents are asked questions about the tasks they expect to perform on the site. The answers given are used to refine design and navigation concepts, and the design of individual pages.
• Full Usability Testing: it involves monitoring users from the target market who try to accomplish set tasks. This area of website design and development is often overlooked. It is probably the most valuable form of website evaluation due to gaining real world evidence on the effectiveness of the website.
• Customer Feedback and Usage Statistics: this information should be used to continually monitor and improve site performance.
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Tips for making site content and navigation more effective

• Evaluate the conversion funnel of the website. Consider where visitors are likely to click next when attempting to complete certain tasks. The site content must be coherently structured and be hierarchical in nature. This allows visitors to navigate the site in a manner that fits each person’s individual need.
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• Keep the amount of website content to a minimum whilst ensuring the visitor is informed on what the organisation does and the solution it can provide them with.
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• Maintain less than eight menu items. A higher number of menu items will make the navigation look cluttered.
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• Ensure familiar web conventions are present on the website. These include navigational aids such as breadcrumbs, which show the path the visitor has followed to their current location, and the corporate logo as a link to the home page.
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• An effective Call To Action (CTA) where it is required. Whether the CTA is for encouraging the prospect to make an enquiry, to sign up to receive a newsletter or purchase a product, the CTA needs to be clear and easy to locate.