Contact Information on Your Website - December 11th, 2008

There is nothing more annoying than finding a website with a product or service that you are interested in buying but no obvious way of contacting the company.

Make your customers lives easier and potentially increase revenue by placing your contact details in an easily accessible place.

The most obvious thing to do is to create a ‘contact us’ page. This page should contain your main phone number plus any other useful numbers such as customer services, sales, accounts etc. You can also include a fax number if applicable.

Your contact us page should also include your email address or a contact form. There are many advantages of using a contact form including helping to protect your email address from being scraped and added to spam lists. Contact forms also make it easier for users to send a quick enquiry rather than feeling they have to write a lengthy email or pick up the phone and run the gauntlet of a sales team.

It is useful to include your full postal address on your contact form along with directions or an interactive map to help visitors find your premises. You may also wish to include the opening hours of your office or shop.

Many websites now have a ‘request a call back’ option or ‘live chat’. Live chat can be very useful if you offer support to your site users or customers. For instance a customer on an ecommerce site who is having difficulty with the check out procedure could be helped through it by an operator using a ‘live chat’ system. Result = A happy customer and another sale for the company.

Having created your perfect contact page you now need to make it as easy to find as possible for your website users. Think about where you would look if you were a viewer. The answer is likely to be top right in a horizontal navigation bar, bottom of a vertical navigation bar or in the footer of each page. I would recommend one instance in the main navigation plus again in the footer.

Call your navigation link something simple like ‘Contact’ or ‘Contact Us’.

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Usability and Design Pitfalls - December 9th, 2008

Usability plays a very important part when designing. Today I will be highlighting some issues with website design that can affect the usability of the targeted audience. Some of the bellow flaws are simple problems such as, link and header colours but it is surprising to see how many designers forget to incorporate simple ideas that can help aid a user experience.

Bellow are common pitfalls and solutions to these problems.

No Imagery
Take a magazine cover for instance, if a magazine cover does not include any images how would it attract its audience? Images play a vital role within the design and usability stages of any website development. Images can sometimes be used to explain a given problem easily without using paragraphs of text. Imagery can also be used to gain the viewers attention, so images can manipulate the end users experience.
Too Much text
Usability has changed over time, broadband usage is a lot higher since the introduction of wireless devices. With this in mind, bandwidth is much greater so creating a more fulfilled website using multimedia won’t hurt your viewer’s experience. End users can get bored of the same formatted text and may leave as a result. Colour, imagery can help to eliminate this problem.
Colours
Colours play a large role in any website design. Using the wrong colour scheme or choice of colours can affect the website dramatically. For example using a white background with yellow text is not considered good practise. Try to adopt a dark on light approach or visa versa when using colour. Using different coloured links and headings can help to break text based content apart, this will also help usability because end users can quickly find what they are looking for, certain blog posts, external links and so forth.
Interfacing
Interfaces should be clear and incorporate some sort of interactivity; by getting the balance right the end user can find what they wish quickly and enjoy the experience in the process. Roll over images for main menus and JavaScript frameworks can help to add dynamic and modern touches to your design. But compatibility is a massive problem when adopting such approaches.

S.Whiston,  Web Design

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