The only thing worse than a website that doesn’t have what users are looking for is a website that does but makes it all but impossible to find. Here are some tricks for keeping your site neat and easy to use.
Prioritize: Unfortunately, you can’t make all your content mind-numbingly easy to find. Decide what elements are absolutely the most important for your users to see (Hours of operation? “Purchase Our Products” link?) and give them the prime real estate. Putting the important stuff front and center is not enough, however; you should also move less important content — say, your boring company history — out of the way so it won’t distract visitors.
Write for the web: Web users are unbelievably impatient: most likely, they’ll read about 20% of the average page before moving on. If you want them to read more, start by making your writing as concise as possible. Use bullet points or numbers to help guide the reader, and avoid subjective, boastful language whenever possible (people tune you out if they think you’re just taking about how great you are). Simple style changes like these can more than double the amount visitors are willing to read.
Keep ads under control: If you don’t need ads to support your site, you can count your lucky stars. If you do have ads, however, all is not necessarily lost. Try to keep the ads unobtrusive (avoid bright colors or animation) and limit the number of advertisers, just like Google does. Of course, Google only makes $20 billion a year from online advertising, what do they know? Maybe you should use florescent pink flashing banners after all.
Use the navigation menu wisely: Navigation menus are usually the first place people look when they want to find something. Think carefully about how you want to organize content, then make sure the titles of your links are clear (“Contact” is probably more useful than “Holler at Us”). Consider using a CSS drop down menu if you have more content than you know what to do with.
Don’t rely on the footer: A quick word of advice about stuffing important information into a footer: don’t do it. While it doesn’t hurt to include your phone number or email address, you should definitely repeat your contact information in another, easier to find part of your site. Most users consider the footer to be just more irrelevant small print; save this space for copyright info and the logo of your web designer.