Making your website user-friendly is extremely important to ensure your patients return.
Websites with clear menu tabs and transparent information were statistically preferred according to Usability Tools results of a case study that analyzed and tested the websites of 8 universities.
We have all come across a website or blog that is not user-friendly, doesn’t work or doesn’t allow us to find what we are searching for and it is a pain. Why would we return to a site like this? We quit and go to a different site for the information that we want.
Making sure your website is user-friendly can be tricky. The key is to envision yourself as the patient. An effective user-friendly website includes:
Navigation
Make sure that your site is easy to navigate. Knowing where to go to find the appropriate service is important.
- Making a menu or easy to follow links is important.
- Make sure the links and menus work. Broken links cause frustration and don’t get you the results that you intend.
- Adding drop down menus will make it even easier for customers to go directly to what they want.
- Don’t make the menu too long. It doesn’t add to the intended goal and is difficult to follow. Remember too, that people like to scan titles and tabs.
- Break your categories into smaller ones
- Your website needs to be accessible across all platforms and devices- cellphones, tablets, computers.
- Do your best to make the website look similar across all platforms, so the customers will know where to find the product they are looking for.
- A search bar is crucial. These help patients navigate your website faster than clicking through links.
Design
Think of your brand when creating your design and graphic. Be consistent with colors across all platforms.
- A simple color scheme is favorable since it will be your focus.
- A more dynamic design is used to promote more than one item. Use this when you want to show off your best items all at once.
- An easy-to-follow theme should accompany your company’s theme colors to provide unity to your site and strengthen your brand. Think like CocaCola. Everywhere they can be found, there is a red, white and blue logo.
- Long paragraphs are not effective. The eyes need places with white space to rest. Ideally, a paragraph is limited to 3 sentences or so.
- Adding pictures between the paragraphs or explanations is helpful. This helps the visual learners better understand.
- Color choice is just as important as the way you show your content. Avoid overly bright neon colors that strain the eyes.
- Have colors that compliment or contrast.
- Make all the pages equally as attractive. Ensuring that all the pages from the homepage to the products page are visually attractive will show unison of a great design.
F-Layout
The F-Layout provides the most important information where your viewers usually focus their eyes. This design was captured using an eye tracking camera that shows that consumers favor an F design. It has been proven to be effective, and most successful websites do have this design in fact.
Audience
Consider your patient demographics and create information that is relevant and useful to them while remaining in sync with the services that you provide and your website will be more effective.
- Analyze your traffic and call pattern with any new design and tweak it weekly until you get the best results.
- If it works, don’t change it! If you change the format of your website, it may be harder for regulars or prospective patients to find what they are looking for.
- Your audience will define your theme and color scheme. A younger audience would be attracted to a colorful theme, while an older generation prefers simpler ones.
Recap: How to create optimal website usability
Make sure that your website is:
- Easy to navigate
- Has no broken links
- Works on all devices including mobile ones
- Easy and fast to access
- Web design in keeping with your brand
Check out generalassemb.ly and thenextweb for more tips and strategies for providing a better user online experience.
Test drive your own website. What do you like and dislike? What can you change? What didn’t function? Your experiences will help you create a user-friendly website from both the physician’s and patient’s point of view.
For more information, check out “Content Copy Made Easy” on Amazon.com