8 Proven Tips To Improve Website Accessibility And Usability
Websites have become crucial in the current situations for businesses to stay in contact with their customers and keep them updated. Without the web platform, this online connection between businesses and customers will be impossible.
Having a website is not enough to stay attached to your customers, but your website needs to perform well for the user. This performance will be measured non the basis of the accessibility and usability rates of the user. Accessibility is not important for ecommerce websites only, but all the other types of websites must be good enough to use.
Keep reading this article to extract detailed information on website accessibility and usability and tips for improving them.
What is Website Accessibility and Usability?
Website accessibility means that the elements, tools, and techniques on a website are designed so that they become easier for users to use. When the websites are easier to deal with, the user becomes comfortable using them, and the increased rates of website use are known as usability. Both usability and accessibility are important for improving the user experience of a website. Following are certain reasons for having accessible websites.
- Improved user experience
- Access to information
- Improved usability
- Higher web traffic
- Easy navigations
- Higher user interactions
- Ease of use for disabled users
Top 8 Tips for Improving Site Accessibility and Usability
For many businesses and website owners, keeping up with their users and customers through the website is only possible by making them accessible and easy to use. While designing and developing your websites, you must keep your users in mind to develop websites that these users can use comfortably. You need to take and implement certain effective strategies to make websites usable and accessible.
Following are some tried and tested tips for improving website accessibility and usability.
1) Site maps
Your web page may have multiple pages, and a naive and new user will be completely unaware of each page on your site. Providing user sitemaps will help the users navigate through your web pages to find the relevant information. Such sitemaps make information and required data accessible for the users. You must ensure that your development team has developed the user sitemaps and the sitemaps to navigate search engines to your various pages. If not, then you can consult the services of a web development company in Dubai for developing easy-to-use and accessible websites.
2) Easy to use for disabled people
While developing the website, you must consider your users and what type of users will be accessing your website. Various users have various disabilities, and to ensure their ease of website use, you need to make websites easier to use and access. Following are the types of disabilities and impairments you need to consider while developing your websites.
- Visual impairments
- Listening impairments
- Cognitive impairments
3) Captions for videos and images
Your website is incomplete without adding some images and video content. But it is also equally important to provide an Alt tax and title for each image and video content. In such a way, the accessibility and understandability of the user increases, which in return improves the website usability of the user. Adding captions to your video content and image files will provide extra information to your users and improve their understanding if they fail to interpret the visuals.
4) Focus on the color combination
The color combination and the theme of your website matter greatly in deciding whether the user is at ease or not. Using many bold colors and a combination of mixed colors always results in a bad user experience. Web developers must be aware of the color combinations that make it hard for the user to look at their screens for longer. Using mute colors will help the user use a web application without a headache and having hurtful eyes. If a color looks good to your eyes, it does not mean that the users will also be comfortable. Go for the colors that are mute and soothing to the eyes so that the user will not leave the website.
5) Structure and optimize content
Users are always searching for information, and they need to get access to the content and information easily. Having structured and quality web content increases user accessibility and decreases bounce rates. They will stay longer on your website if they get access to the searched content easily, and it is also understandable. Following are some ways you can structure your data for easy accessibility.
- Use headings
- Use clear fonts
- Use dark colors on a light background
6) Make simple accessibility forms
The only way a user accesses your website is through login and sign-up forms. Having or adding too complex forms results in a bad user experience. Such experiences are a barrier to access a website and use it. Instead of asking too many questions and credentials in your web forms, make them short and precise. Only ask for the essential credentials, such as the user’s name, email, and password.
7) Test for mobile-friendliness
For making your websites highly accessible, you need to check and test whether they are mobile-friendly or not. Your user must be able to access your website using their mobile phones without finding any difference in its appearance, working, and experience. Making websites responsive and platform-independent always results in mobile friendly-sites. Web applications should be accessible and usable regardless of the device and platform used to operate them.
8) Perform usability testing
Before you deploy a website, make sure you perform usability tests and various other necessary tests for making websites accessible. The usability test relates to the operation of a website by various individuals and their experiences using them. If the users have a good experience using the website, then it is good to go for deployment. If it is not easy to access and use, then you must reconsider and redevelop your website. For avoiding such complications, go for the services of experts to make the websites accessible in the first go.
Make your website accessible to users!
For increasing website traffic, your site must be accessible and easy to use. Adding too complex things and a lot of things does not make your website informative and accessible. You must follow certain strategies and implement them to enable user accessibility to your web applications. Without making them accessible, the content on your site is of no use, and you cannot generate much traffic to your site.
