In today’s world, websites for startup companies are key to their future success.
It is however not sufficient to just have a website designed with the level of competition online. There are principles and strategies one must apply during the design of a startup company's website to make it stand out amidst the competition.
While there are lots of principles one may or may not apply to make a website great, there is one that must never be missed out on for any reason while designing a startup company's website.
So, whatever principles you choose to or not to adopt, always keep this particular principle in mind, the website's USABILITY.
Why website usability?
We'll explore that in this guide:
- Why usability is the most important while designing a startup company's website.
- The principles of usability to adopt when designing your company's website.
- Testing your company's website for Usability.
Let’s start with,
Usability: the most important when designing a startup company's website.
Website usability is actually a way of designing a website that focuses on the user’s needs. It utilizes user-centric design processes to ensure that websites are efficient and easy to use for the people who actually use them (your startup company's target audience).
Since the users are the major determinant of whether your startup company will eventually be successful or not, usability is of utmost importance.
People will bounce out of your website,
- If it isn't usable,
- If they find it hard to navigate around,
- Find your website complex to understand,
- Find it jam-packed and so on.
What then are the principles to adopt while designing a startup company's website?
The principles of usability to adopt when designing your company's website.
i) Don't make your users think.
Visitors come to your website with specific goals in mind and they always want to achieve that goal as fast as possible.
If your company's website’s design distracts or confuses visitors, they might either need time to do a lot of thinking or just leave never coming back.
So make your website self-evident or at least self-explanatory. Get rid of the question marks.
ii) Design your company website for scanning, not reading.
Because of the large array of website options, people are presented with today, they don't always want to take time while on one website.
Once they stumble on your website, instead of reading just scan through.
If you, therefore, want to design an effective website for your startup company, always consider these three facts about how people use the website:
- They don't read pages. They scan them.
- They don't make the optimal choices. They satisfice.
- They don't figure out how things work. They muddle through.
iii) Create effective visual hierarchies.
Visual hierarchy guides people toward content or actions of importance. It determines the order in which people take in and process the information on a page.
Here are a few tips to create an effective visual hierarchy on your startup company's website.
- Use Size to Enhance (or Reduce) Visibility.
- Color and Contrast should be used to Direct users' Attention.
- Typographic Hierarchy: Start With the 3 Levels to Organize Your Design. Get the most out of HTML heading tags. Use h6 after h5 after h4 after h3 after h2 after h1.
- Spacing: Give Your Layout Balance, Flow, and Focus.
iv) Breadcrumbs.
Breadcrumbs serve as an effective visual aid, indicating the location of the user within the site’s hierarchy.
It improves the findability of site pages. The structure of a website is more easily understood because it is laid out in a breadcrumb.
So for the best startup company website design, make sure you have breadcrumbs in your navigation design. It's like "You're here" on a map, so your user will easily recognize their current position.
v) Availability.
Availability is simply how easy it is to access your website. Your startup company's website’s availability can be affected by the web hosting platform you use and by how compatible it is with the devices users are accessing it with.
Testing your company's website for Usability.
Usability testing generally involves recruiting volunteers and asking them to use your company's website.
You can then monitor their clicks, movements, and behavior and identify potential pain points during the website design process.
The volunteers can also give you feedback as well.
To wrap it all up,
As we've seen, usability is the most important principle to consider during the website design process of a startup company. It's however not the only factor as there are other factors that work hand-in-hand to generate a more complete and high-quality website design.
These factors include ensuring the website is SEO Compliant, mobile-friendly, possesses Adaptive Content, Beta Trials are performed, etc.
Developing a website design strategy can actually be a tricky one, so it's important you get experts to help with that.
And, we as experts can certainly guide you from planning out your website’s design to delivering continuous optimization, and updates. As our team, has the right ambit and skills to help you get your desired results and outcomes!
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