Trying to keep your users happy is the name of the game. A usable website can help your users, and in turn help you with your ultimate goal of your website. The following is a list of dos and do nots of web usability.

Things that Hurt Your Web Usability

This is a list of usability no-nos that can frustrate your users. Try and avoid the following.

Hiding Information from the User

Nothing is more frustrating than going on a site and you can’t find what you’re looking for. If your user is looking for something simple like contact info, rates or prices and can’t find them, its more than likely they’re going to go somewhere else. Make it easy to find information they’ll use.

Forcing Users to Do Things Your Way

When filling out forms the user should have to worry if there are dashes in their phone number or credit card. Take care of this on the coding side, and give your users a care free time while using your website.

Ask for Info You Don’t Need

There is nothing worse than having to fill out a huge form just try a demo. People don’t like to give out unnecessary information. If you’re getting information from your forms like ‘asdf’ it might be a good indicator to shorten it up.

Faking Sincerity

People aren’t stupid, they can tell when you are being sincere and when you just want something from them. Have content that can actually help people and not try and sell them something.

Wasting Users Time

Long flash intros and wading through feel-good marketing photos fall under this category. People are in a hurry. If you waste their time, don’t expect them to hang around.

Your Site Looks Amateurish

You could have the best content in the world but, if your website is sloppy, disorganized or generally unprofessional, users will loose all confidence in the content on your site.

Things that Help Your Web Usability

This is a list of things that can instill confidence in your user. With good reason, some of these are direct opposites of what can hurt your web usability.

Know What People Want and Make it Obvious

This could double as the definition of web usability. You just need to take the time and figure out how people are going to use your site, then make it really simple for them to do so.

Tell User What They Want to Know

It’s a good idea to be upfront with your users. A good example is shipping costs. People want to know this. They probably already know there is going to be a charge, so why not be upfront with them and gain there trust.

Save Users Steps Wherever you Can

Take the time in coding to make the users life easier. Try and make any processes as short as possible. Amazon.com does a good job of this with their one-click checkout for members.

Take the Time

You want to make sure you take the time to make sure your content is well organized, easy to find, presented nicely, and is accurate. Without these the users confidence in your content goes out the window.

Good FAQs

Having a good FAQs section can really help out users. Make sure that your FAQs are up to date, there is nothing worse than searching through irrelevant FAQs. Also don’t use FAQs as a marketing pitch. (e.g. “I’m glad you asked that…we have sooo many features that handle this exact problem…yada yada yada.”)

Make it Easy to Recover From Errors

People make mistakes. If you give them a way to recover from them, they’ll love you for it. iGoogle does a good job of this when you remove a widget from your home page. They give you the option to undo incase you mistakenly press the remove button.

Appologize if Neccessary

If there is a case that you just can’t get around, applogize for your shortcommings. A common case is if your site is down for maintenace.

Hopefully these will help guide you to improve your web usability on your site. When in doubt just try and figure out what will make things faster and easier for your user.