Website Usability 5 Rules That Will Never Change

Website Usability rules come and go mostly due to changing technology and design awareness. As time goes on users become more experienced with website design elements and learn how to use the standard features of their browsers. Even though many old website usability rules don’t carry as much weight as they used to, there are still a few that will never change.

Website Usability Rules To Ignore At Your Own Risk

So what are the steadfast rules that no designer in their right mind would ignore?

• No Unscannable Text – users just don’t want to read your site’s content. Sure this isn’t as true with blogs, but if your primary site is a blog, or you have over 25% of your inbound traffic coming into a blog that is part of your main site, you still need to follow this rule. Often called “Dense Content”, long sentences without paragraph breaks and headings make for a hard read. When a visitor hits your site or a page on it and they feel they need to work at getting the info they need, they will make like a tree and leave. You have to make your content scannable and use bolding to highlight the primary keywords within a paragraph. This is also a good SEO practice.
• Visited Links Must Have A Different Color Than Other Links – if you follow standard practices then you utilize breadcrumb navigation and other techniques to help your site visitors navigate your site. This is all well and good as long as the visited links have a different color than the standard blue of millions of hyperlinks all over the web. Users can get confused pretty easy and they should always know when they have followed a link. By changing the color of visited links you assure your users of knowing where they have been.
• No Pop Up Windows – if you use the Internet you must hate pop up windows. In fact most browsers, ISP’s and toolbars come equipped to block pop ups. So why do sites still use pop up windows? Who knows, but it is still a very bad idea.
• No Back Buttons – yes there are still sites that employ the hated “back” button. Back. Back where? Use bread crumb navigation at least, no back, down, up, forward, right or left. This is and always will be a bad practice.
• Don’t Over Do Ads – too many ads on a site is one quick way to loose whatever stickiness you might have had. Having banner ads all over the place will take away from whatever worthwhile content you might actually have on the site. Most users know by now that primary site features are usually in text or in buttons that correspond with shopping carts and images. Google Ads all over the site is a sure way to loose your visitors.

These are just a few of the steadfast website usability rules that have been passed down over the ages. Stick to common design practices and you will do just fine.

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Website Usability Overview
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Website Usability and SEO
Search Engine Usability