Website Usability: Designing for Mobile Devices

In the quest to make your website more user-friendly, there comes a time when you need to give great thought as to what type of device and user you are designing for. As mentioned in part 1 of this series, many people today are accessing the web via mobile and multi-touch devices. As Steve Jobs commented just days after the release of the iPad," Elements that rely only on mousemove, mouseover, and mouse out or as a CSS pseudo-class hover may not always behave as expected on a touch-screen device such as the iPad or the iPhone."¹ As a result, web developers should keep in mind that anything designed for the web and requiring a hover state has an uncertain future and may face serious website usability issues. Not sure? Consider this telling fact, "There are two smartphones being purchased for every one desktop computer."²

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Website Usability: 7 Reasons Why It's All About the User

As you begin examining your website to see if it is usable to your visitors, there are many aspects you will want to research. Not only do you want it simple yet informative, you want your visitors to recognize, among other things, that they are important to you. Recently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, after much research and combined years of experience have released the following website accessibility guidelines to enhance a website's usability.

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4 Ways "Less is More" Regarding User-Friendly Websites

In a day when technology is constantly changing and improving, building a unique website has become more than choosing a WordPress template and plopping in your content. After all, there's Flash, Javascript, a rainbow of color choices, gradients, boxes, bars, animated GIFs, widgets, gadgets, thingamajigs and many other programming and design elements to choose from, right? But does a website really need all of these "latest and greatest" web elements in order to be effective and usable? Many website developers and interface design experts agree the answer is a resounding "No." In fact, the wealth of possible website effects and features has lead to the detriment of many a website, when it comes to being user-friendly. And shouldn't that be one of, if not the goal in any design?

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