Website Usability and Trust

The usability of your website, and the trust you build within visitors determine if they perform the actions you want them to take.

Visitors will stay on your website longer and take more of the actions you want, when the textual content, website structure, and design make your website easy to comprehend and navigate, and instills trust that you can fulfill their needs.

Website usability and trust involves making your website user friendly, and instilling trust in visitors that you deliver the solution they want and need.

Elements of Website Usability and Trust

• Website Copywriting —deliver words that inform, and instill trust that gets people to take action.
• Website Information Architecture —modeling information to accommodate activities of the user.
• Website Conversion Funnel —the track a consumer takes through the website marketing process flow.
• Website Graphic Design —enhance the effectiveness, meaning, and presentation of website content.

Objectives of Website Usability and Trust

1. Make it easy for website visitors to find what they need.
2. Instill trust in website visitors that you meet their expectations.

Website copywriting is the starting point for online content presentation, marketing, and sales. The objective of website copywriting is to deliver words that inform, and that get people to take action.

Website copy plays a significant role in getting viewers to take action; whether to complete a contact/lead form, pick up the phone to call you, make a purchase, sign-up, download, etc.

Essentials of Website Copywriting

• Writing Headlines
• Writing Page Content
• Copywriting for Search Engine Optimization
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Copywriting Research

Information architecture (IA) helps people find content on your website. It is the structural design of the website’s information environment, it concerns the organizing and labeling of website content to support usability and findability. It is the modeling of information to accommodate the activities of the user.

Importance of Website Information Architecture

• The ease with which people comprehend information on your website depends on how you organize, label, and relate the information.
• Well organized website content leads to increased page views, leads, and sales, and reduced bounce rates.
• The easier your website is to use, the more people will have success using it.

Objective of Website Information Architecture

To categorize the information into a structure that the website visitors can understand quickly, so they can easily retrieve the content for which they are searching.

Who, What and Why: Website Information Architecture

• User (visitor) – who is using the website?
• Content – what are they likely to be searching for?
• Context – why is the customer (user) looking for it?

Conversion funnel is a website marketing term to describe the track a consumer takes through the website marketing process flow including: original point of website awareness, website page entry point, navigation and search, and the ultimate goal of conversion: number of pages visited, repeat visitor, lead, or sale.

The metaphor of a funnel is used to describe the decrease in numbers that occurs at each step of the process.

The conversion funnel illustrates the theoretical customer journey towards the purchase of a product or service.

Four Basic Levels of Website Conversion Funnel

• Awareness —the customer is aware of the existence of a product or service
• Interest —actively expressing an interest in a product group
• Desire —aspiring to a particular brand or product
• Action —taking the next step towards purchasing the chosen product

Example Scenario of Website Conversion Funnel

1. Google user initiates a search query
2. User is presented with a list of search results
3. User selects a search result
4. User becomes your website visitor
5. The first page the website visitor sees is called the landing page
6. The landing page presents the visitor with available options
7. Visitor likes what they see, and selects another page to view more
8. Visitor continues browsing and searching the website
9. Visitor chooses to complete a “Contact Me” form and becomes a lead, or chooses to add one or more products to their shopping cart

A well-constructed conversion funnel anticipates a person’s needs which would prompt them through a set of activities to lead them to take the desired action(s).

Graphic design for websites requires a keen sense for usability and trust. Once the skeletal foundation for displaying and navigating content has been with copywriting, information architecture, and the conversion funnel; the graphic design process can start.

Website Usability and Graphic Design

Website graphic design must serve multiple masters. The job of graphic design is to enhance the effectiveness, meaning, and presentation of the website content, information architecture, and conversion funnel.

While good graphic design can make a website more visually pleasing or beautiful, an excellent design first enhances the website’s form for the user’s functional usability.

Website Trust and Graphic Design

Website graphic design for trust takes into account your primary audience, and the type of content your website hosts. It takes into account an understanding of the degree to which a design should be tempered, or simplified.

It is important to keep graphics from obscuring the overall objective—making your website easy for visitors to use.

Build website usability so visitors trust your website offerings and your company. Excellent usability and display of trustworthiness keep more visitors from hitting the back button to find a better website that will give them what they want and need.