I have decided to share some usability tips for web design. When something frustrates me or impresses me when using web sites, I will be sharing advice on how you can implement some of these best practices.
When designing for websites, remember that people read from left to right if it’s written in English.
The call to action or the button you want users to use or press needs to be on the right hand side as it is the first place the user will look once they have filled out the form. Ideally it needs to be a button in a stand-out colour and lining up with the input boxes above. It just makes everything a bit neater.
I was logging in on the City of York Council website and I automatically pressed ‘CANCEL’ not ‘SIGN IN’ as it is on the right, and ‘Sign In’ and ‘Register’ are on the left, along with ‘Forgotten your password’. Which REALLY frustrated me as it took me backwards to the step before.
The user experience shouldn’t take you in circles! Especially on a website which will be being used by thousands of people.
Below is how I would improve the UX on the page.
- ‘Sign In’ is a button and on the right directly in line below the form
- ‘Cancel’ and ‘register’ which aren’t as important are smaller with ‘register’ next to sign in.
- ‘Forgotten your password’ is also really important but I have moved it to the right to be lining up. Ignore the colour of the text – ideally they’d be all in black or grey!
COYC are not my client so I hope they don’t mind me giving them a free simple tip on how to improve their user journey.
As a freelance web designer, I offer usability audits of sites – I would love to take a look at your site and give you some advice of how to make it user friendly, so please get in touch! I can do this via a video call or visuals.
