Website Design Guideline #1: Improving the User Experience with Clear Strategic Intent

ARTICLE SNIPPET - Strategic Intent is Perhaps the Most Important of the 14 Guidelines. If Users Can't Figure Out Your Website, They Not Only Leave Quickly—They Won't Come Back.

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they're looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and difficult to get users to become loyal customers and revisit again and again.

Creating user-friendly websites begins by following the 14 Mequoda Website Design Guidelines for successful website design. By reviewing a site's score for each of the 14 items, along with the overall average score, the areas of the site that operate well, and those that need work, become evident.

In this chapter of Website Design for Publishers and Authors, we take a close look at Guideline #1: Improving the User Experience with Clear Strategic Intent.

• To communicate strategic intent, you must first know the answers to these questions: What do users want to do at your site? What do you want users to do at your site?
• When a first-time user lands on your homepage—or any webpage, for that matter—it should be immediately obvious to that user, by simply scanning the screen, what can be accomplished, seen or found on that site and/or that page.
• Clearly and prominently focus on the action(s) that you want them to take and that they expect to take: Browse? Buy? Subscribe? Sign up? Join? Sell?
• The content and graphics should be well-presented and prioritized in order to guide the user's eye to the desired action(s).
• Further, those action(s) should clearly relate to the strategic mission of the company.

To read this Mequoda Library article, Subcribe to the Mequoda Library or purchase as a single article. Or, Email this to a friend.

Purchase Single Article - $47.00 Subscribe to- $197 per month Includes a months access to over 440 reports, reviews, and case studies. Subscribe to- $497 per year Includes access to over 440 reports, reviews, and case studies for a whole year.