Understanding Effective Web Design

The user experience

In order to construct an effective website you first need to understand how people interact with web-sites, how they think and what are the basic patterns of user’ behavior.

How do web users think?

Basically, web user habits aren’t that different from shopper’ habits in a store. Web users glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. In fact, there are large parts of the page they don’t even look at.

Most web users search for something interesting (or useful) and clickable; as soon as some promising candidates are found, users click. If the new page doesn’t meet a users’ expectations, the Back button is clicked or they go elsewhere and the search process is continued.

• web users appreciate quality and credibility. If a page provides users with high-quality content, they are willing to compromise the content with advertisements and the design of the site. This is the reason why not-that-well-designed web-sites with high-quality content gain a lot of traffic over years. Content is more important than the design which supports it.
• web users don’t read, they scan. Analysing a web-page, users search for some fixed points or anchors which would guide them through the content of the page.

User Expectations

Web users are impatient and insist on instant gratification. Very simple principle: If a web-site isn’t able to meet user’ expectations, then the company hasn't considered it's user expectations properly. The higher is the cognitive load and the less intuitive is the navigation, the more willing are users to leave the web-site and search for alternatives.

Web users don’t make optimal choices. Users don’t search for the quickest way to find the information they’re looking for. Neither do they scan web-page in a linear fashion, going sequentially from one site section to another one. Instead users satisfice; they choose the first reasonable option. As soon as they find a link that seems like it might lead to the goal, there is a very good chance that it will be immediately clicked. Optimizing is hard, and it takes a long time. Satisficing is more efficient.

User Goals

Web users follow their intuition. In most cases users muddle through instead of reading the information provided. The basic reason for that is that users don’t care. “If they find something that works, they stick to it. It doesn’t matter to them if they understand how things work, as long as they can use them. If your site visitors are going to act like you’re designing billboard, then design great billboards.”

Web users want to have control. Users want to be able to control their browser and rely on the consistent data presentation throughout the site. E.g. they don’t want new windows popping up unexpectedly and they want to be able to get back with a “Back”-button to the site they’ve been before.

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