Thursday, July 21, 2011

User-centric websites: How to develop them

As an owner of any business you would certainly like to have a web presence! Plainly speaking, your purpose of website creation is revenue generation. But do you think just having a website designed and developed will do your purpose? No, you have to find a web design company that can design you user centric websites. Well, you might be thinking what this "user centric" term is? A user centric site is nothing but a site that concentrates on the design and development that suits the user need and friendliness. Building user centric websites begins with layout design that is very much business purposive, thinks of the user need, implies trust worthiness and many more aspects.

As a web directory, serving thousands of business types, Online Web Directory always tries to present the visitors some tips to browse and find their desired products and service providers. So now let us see a few aspects of designing user centric websites:
  • Decide business objective & relation to web: First of all, when you are thinking of designing a website, you need to present the business objective to the designers and know from them how to relate it with the web. For example, if your site sells some products, ask the designer how you will collect the online payment through your site. User centric websites are going to favor users in using the site and user desire to be fulfilled.

  • Target the users and know what they are to find from you: It is very obvious that you have some targeted users for your business. And accordingly you have to let your designers know the targeted users, depending on which they will place text information, image gallery or other things which engage the user on your site. All user centric websites are designed accordingly. For example your users are to find information then the text based information has to be given priority. On the other hand a photography site should not prioritize any more than images! Even depending on the user locations, type of images may be arranged.

  • User behavior does matter in user centric websites: There cannot be any question that users cum customers are everything in a site. So the complete site needs to be user friendly and compatible to avoid any touch of irritation to the users. For this reason the site needs to be thoughtfully designed letting users find the navigations easy, the presence of site map and may be with a guided video tour to smooth the use of the site. Even there cannot be lack of information on the site about your products, services or the both.

  • User centric websites are compatible and trust worthy: It is unquestionable that your site has to arouse trust in the user mind. For example, in an ecommerce site the user has to feel secure in transaction. At the same time no user will wait if your site takes time to load or not compatible with different browsers. So keeping these factors the site has to be designed with security information and icons prominently, web pages have to be light-weighted and need to be compatible with all browsers.

  • User centric websites have to pass user experience test: Last but not the least – your site has to pass the usability testing. Sometimes it is found that for some little extra expenses, you may be avoiding testing services from your designers or the developers. This should not be done. The reason is very simple, before the launch of the site, some users (who do not have used the site before) conduct manual user experience tastings. These tests remove problems that may be creeping into your site. At the same users may pass you several instructions on making your site more users centric.
Well, these are only a few factors that help in creating user centric websites. Hopefully you have understood how you can develop a site that values the users at the same time automatically fulfilling your purpose of revenue or business generation. You have to go with the trend of the time – know your users and let them use your site freely with your one of the perfect user centric websites.

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