Making a Website? Follow All Best Practices for Best Results

The best sites are those that help your business fulfill its objectives. An experienced Chicago web development agency applies many principles and strategies to make bring those fulfillment expectations to your business.

These include:

• Usability to engage and boost customer experience
• Accessibility to make the website inclusive and useful to many
• Design suitable for mobile devices
• User testing to ensure the site is helpful and secure
• Performance analysis to keep track of and fix issues

Make your website work hard for your business. Read this article to learn more about these best practices! Let’s go!

To learn how Digital Authority Partners can create a standout website for you, watch this video!

1. Usability To Engage and Boost Customer Experience

As one of the primary UX principles, usability refers to the ease with which someone can use the website. For example, they can quickly find the information they need. Visitors should also not get lost among hundreds of pages.

A highly usable website is always engaging and efficient in increasing the customer experience. It helps customers make smart decisions and removes barriers during shopping or checkout.

The more effortless it is for users to find what they need and complete tasks, the greater their satisfaction with the website.

Furthermore, when users are happy, you can easily bring them deeper into the sales funnel. You can even convert some of your customers into advocates.

What makes a website usable? It has these three key features:

• Consistency. It simply means that users do not have to learn new patterns when interacting with the product. This includes consistent language, layout, and user interface components. For instance, the call-to-action button should read and look the same on the desktop and mobile website versions.
• Simplicity. The site is easy to understand. It is designed with the user in mind, minimizing cognitive load, and keeping things as straightforward as possible. A Chicago web development agency keeps your pages simple through clear labeling, hierarchy, and limits to the number of clicks.
• User feedback. This involves actively listening to user needs and incorporating feedback into design decisions. Doing this regularly helps refine the site’s user experience and relevance.

2. Accessibility To Make the Website Inclusive and Useful To Many

Although your website cannot convert all visitors into customers, it must not discriminate against anyone, including people with disabilities. This is where designing for accessibility comes in.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) outlines technical requirements website owners must adhere to to make their sites accessible and inclusive. These rules are mandatory for those who receive federal funding and are a good practice to include for all websites.

Examples include:

• Text alternatives for non-text content (e.g., alt text in images)
• Keyboard accessibility
• Sufficient color contrast for visually impaired users
• Captions on videos
• Text size options and zoom capabilities
• Easy navigation with common devices and features such as a screen reader and other assistive technologies

3. Design Suitable for Mobile Omnichannel Use

Although more people shop using mobile devices, most still do BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store). This market segment alone could hit a 19.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from by 2027. By the end of the forecast period, the value could reach over $700 billion.

These days, building a website for smartphones or tablets is not enough. A Chicago web development agency should design one with the customer journey in mind.

These are some possible ideas:

• Offer the option for customers to securely save their payment details to minimize the time taken to complete subsequent transactions.
• Provide customers with real-time inventory availability for each store location.
• Optimize site speed and user experience for mobile devices since many customers use their smartphones for BOPIS purchases.
• Integrate the website with other channels, such as social media, to ensure customers can access their accounts on all platforms.
• Understand your sales funnel to know which channel to prioritize.

4. User Testing to Ensure the Site Is Helpful and Secure

You might understand the importance of meticulously designing interfaces to achieve optimal user experiences. However, you cannot predict how users will interact with your website before it launches.

Testing enables you to obtain real user feedback on specific website aspects. You can then identify their pain points and usability fallacies to optimize the website’s functionality and avoid website development mistakes.

Most of all, testing keeps your site safe. You can spot security vulnerabilities and keep users’ data secure.

An expert Chicago web development agency conducts such tests in different phases of site building. It also uses different methodologies, such as:

• A/B testing, where you display two webpage versions with minor differences to determine which is more effective
• Usability testing, where you observe and question participants while they perform tasks on the website.
• Eye-tracking, where a special camera records eye movement to see where participants are looking on the website
• Multivariate testing, where you simultaneously test several variables to reveal the best website elements
• Agile testing, where you use a cycle of feedback and iteration at many design phases

5. Performance Analysis to Track and Fix Issues

Your website can be like a tapestry: it looks good on the outside but is messy at the back.

The “chaos” can decrease the user experience and drive leads away. These two alone can hurt your business goals in the long term.

How can you know if you have website or performance issues? Add performance analysis to relevant web development tips. The answer is performance analysis, which involves:

• monitoring the website’s responsiveness, speed, and stability,
• using a combination of real-time data collection methods, such as tracking user behavior and analyzing application log files,
• optimizing pages through caching, minifying code, and compressing files,
• maximizing your content delivery network (CDN) to reduce loading times,
• identifying and addressing bottlenecks, such as slow database queries or large images,
• testing the website on different devices with varying screen sizes and resolutions,
• understanding user trends by tracking the most visited pages, bounce rates, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).

Summing Up

Making websites work includes following the best design and development practices. This article only scratches the surface of a complex process but provides an overview of the most vital activities.

At Digital Authority Partners (DAP), we provide top-notch website design and development services that help deliver excellent results to your business.

Your Chicago web development agency pays attention to every aspect of website creation to ensure you receive a visually appealing website that effectively addresses your needs. Contact us today to get started on your website project and join the ranks of our satisfied clients.