Web Accessibility : Ensuring an Inclusive User Experience

Have you ever accessed your own website? If not, try accessing your website now as if it were a first-time visitor.

If you find buttons that are difficult to click, unclear navigation, unresponsive design, or slow when scrolling and loading, this should be a warning for you.

This shows that the UX or user experience of your website is very bad. It's normal if there are lots of visitors, but the bounce rate is high and conversions are even low.

People who have just entered are already annoyed, so they will likely leave the website! You certainly don't want this situation to cause your website to plummet further, right?

Therefore, the only way to save from this worst possibility is to improve the website’s UX to make it better.

The Criteria for Good Website UX :-

When visitors enter your website, what are they really looking for? Is it just a fad or is there a particular need?

Yup, visitors definitely have needs or requirements. Whether it's looking for design inspiration, content topics, buying products, or looking for important information.

When visitors click on your website, they hope that your website is the solution to that need or requirement.

If this is fulfilled, a conversion could occur later. A good start you can do is to apply an interesting design.

You may use Google Site Templates offer a convenient way to create a website. All you have to do is pick one of them and customize it in the way you like.

Aside from presenting nice visuals, a good website must be supported with clear information and navigation, features that work, and fast loading. What does it mean?

This means that UX can be said to be good if once visitors enter your website and scroll, they can understand the contents of the website and find what they need.

So, there are 7 factors that can influence the user experience of visitors to your website, namely:

• Useful, is your website useful and able to meet visitors' needs?
• Usable, is your website easy to use?
• Findable, is important content or information on the website easy to find?
• Credible, is your website trustworthy or not?
• Accessible, is your website easy and fast to access on all devices?
• Desirable, is the appearance of your website enough to attract the eyes of visitors?
• Valuable, is accessing your website worth it?

Tips to Improve User Experience :-

Aside from using a page website template, you can also do other things to improve the user experience:

1. Text format must be easy to read

Using a content hierarchy will not be enough to improve your website's UX. The text format in it must also be easy to read.

There are at least 5 things you should pay attention to to create a text format that is easy for visitors to read, namely:

• Use easy-to-read fonts such as Sans-serif, Arial, Georgia, or Times New Roman. Avoid using fonts such as handwriting that are difficult to read.
• Visitors are not reading, but scanning. So, use more headings so that they are immediately visible to visitor's eyes.
• Make sure paragraphs are short and easy to read. You can make it 2-3 lines for 1 paragraph.
• Use numbering or lists so that the information is easier to read and immediately visible to the eye. You can also use different colors, sizes, or thicknesses.
• Highlight keywords or important information. You can also highlight the main points in the content in bold or italic format.

2. Use More Visual Content

One of the tendencies of visitors is that they never read in detail the content you provide. Visitors tend to scan websites quickly to find what they are looking for.

Apart from that, visitors are also more likely to easily digest visual information than text.

Therefore, try to use more visuals in your content. Change the text information that you have created into visual form.

However, you have to use this visual information wisely. Don't make all the information in visual form.

Stick to text to explain information in more detail. Apart from that, this is also important for your website's SEO.

3. Provide White Space, Avoid Too Many Pop-Ups

Have you ever entered a website with too many pop-up ads? Or maybe a website with too dense content?

If so, then what do you feel? Of course, many people feel annoyed because it is difficult for you to find the information you are looking for.

Maybe you hope that dense content can meet all visitors' needs and that lots of pop-ups can increase the likelihood of conversion.

However, this actually makes visitors unfocused and difficult to find what they are looking for.

So, one of the good ways to improve user experience is to use minimal or no pop-ups at all and stick to the other ad types.

4. Create Clear Navigation

One of the mistakes many websites make that makes the UX bad is unclear navigation. In fact, navigation must be clear so that visitors don't get lost when exploring your website.

Many websites place navigation in the wrong location and are not visible to visitors. Many also don't even create navigation on the main page of the website to direct visitors to certain pages.

If it's like this, how are you going to get conversions if visitors can't even get to the page? This is why you should create clear navigation to improve website UX.

Place the main navigation in a directly visible location, for example at the top of the page. Of course with prominent visuals, yes.

Also, make sure to include every important page in the navigation. At least it must lead to the Home, About, Login, Contact, Blog, or Shop page.