USABILITY: Intuitive user friendly websites

Creating a user friendly website structure and intuitive navigational elements makes a website easy for the user to navigate the website and find the content they seek.

For almost as long as people have been accessing websites, ongoing and extensive research has been undertaken by many usability specialists and companies to ana lyse and quantify the different ways that website visitors navigate websites. 

Amongst these findings it has been determined that there are a number of key points on any given website onto which a visitors attention will be focused when viewing a website. People have become accustomed to looking to the top or left side of the page to find the sites navigational structures and menus so it makes sense to keep these website navigation elements where the site visitor is expecting them to be. Trying to get to fancy and clever by incorporating convoluted and overcomplicated navigational elements can result in website visitors not being able to quickly and easily navigate a website to find the information they want and they may end up leaving your site in the hopes of finding the information elsewhere.

Providing multiple complimentary navigational elements and menus strategically positioned on the website pages that enable access to the same content is a method that is often used in the sites that are developed. This means that the site accommodates the majority of visitors irrespective of their preferred method of navigating a website.

Designing and developing websites with only those visitors that have the latest browsers, computers or devices and operating systems is a sure fire way to marginalize millions of potential customers that are not using the latest technology. To ensure optimal usability for the masses it is necessary to design and develop websites that will be accessible to even those that are using systems that are not running the latest browsers and technologies. Any good website designer will work to the lowest common denominator when designing a website to ensure that the majority of users visiting the site will find the website usable and a pleasant experience to visit.