Customers must feel at ease when using your website. Reassuring users that they are in the right pace is one of the most important messages to convay as so many visitors will come directly from a search engine, taking only a couple of seconds whether to stay or not. To help explain how to do this for your site I want to give you a wee test. I want you to close your eyes and answer the following questions (wait until you have read the questions before closing your eyes, please).
If I am standing in my kitchen…
- How do I know it is a kitchen?
- Where are the teaspoons?
- Why is the sink under the window?
Ok, now you can open your eyes (o:
How did you do? Do your answers match mine? Lets see..
How do I know it is a kitchen?
A stupid question I know but it is so obvious it can be misunderstood. The cooker, the washing machine the laminate/tile flooring it all screams kitchen. It is not so obvious where you are when you go on to some websites.
Do you know it is an ecommerce store? What tells you this or if not what are you looking to find out?
If you are on travelcompany.com and there are pictures of planes what kind of information are you expecting from the site? Would you be surprised to find that it is a local directory of public transport companies? Of course you would.
What I am trying to get across is make your site’s function obvious to the user. If it is a site selling electrical goods at low prices don’t have a lightning bolt and tutorials on how to build bird houses. Have a list of your top 5 biggest savers with a thumb nail image and an add to cart button.
Where are the teaspoons?
about flow of page and site
This is one of those questions you think, how am I supposed to know that? Just think about it for a moment. In every Kitchen I have been in the teaspoons are always in the top drawer nearest the kettle. To get more specific they are usually at the front of the drawer in a cutlery tidy in their own compartment lying horizontally.
Why is this important?
This placement is convenient and logical. This is very important when designing your website. When laying out your product page have the product name at the top. Don’t make your add to cart button a text link make it a big bold button with Buy now on it. The Buy now button should always be after the price, users like to know how much they are spending before they commit to a purchase. Make it easy for the user to find, make a decision and more importantly click. There are web design conventions that most websites follow, if you follow them then a familiarity is noticed by the user and will make them feel more relaxed and willing to engage with your site.
Why is the sink under the window?
about conventions and placement eg the header footer.
This is a strange question, I know. But my understanding is that a well designed kitchen has the sink under the window because people will stand at the sink everyday for up to an hour. Giving people a window to look out of is important as it reduces a claustrophobia which standing staring at the wall can cause.
In web design it is important to give the user breathing space. Help the user’s eye glide across and down the page. Highlight the important things. Don’t clutter the page. Give the different elements correct weighting and positioning, with the most important information coming nearest the top left hand corner. Only use colours sparingly and with a purpose. These are some of the nitty gritty principals of design that have to be considered when designing a website. If you are a designer learn them, if you are a developer read up on them, and if you are a perspective client or content administrator be aware of them.
Conclusion
When designing a website’s architecture you have to think about three things in three different ways.
First
You have to think like any user that may come on your site (this is literally anyone with internet access). What you want to portray to them without them having to think is where they are and if the site is what they are looking for.
Second
You have to think like your customers, who are they and what do they want to do. The aims of this stage it to prioritise the areas/information that are most important to the users and get them to it as quickly as possible.
Third
You have to think like a designer. Being able to layout your site in a way that the user can seamlessly move through the site comfortably and confidently takes great skill and if you get over this last hurdle your sure to have a great site.
This is my take on website architecture. If you would like to read more then I suggest reading Donna Spencer’s book, “A Practical Guide to Information Architecture”.
About Timothy McGraw
I am a UX designer, front-end developer and owner of Design Scientifc. With a keen eye for detail I care not only how products look but also how they work. User experience has become a passion, and users are at center of each of the projects I am part of. I am obsessed with web standards and accessibility, so much so that I love clean semantic code. I write about anything web related but mostly UX.