I had something happen this morning that has never happened in the 10+ years I’ve been designing and developing websites.

I received a call from the client, of our client, to let us know how impressed and satisfied she was with their website.  Again, it wasn’t our client … it was the end-user of the website, a general consumer.

Wow. Of course this is one person’s opinion, but the fact they took the time to locate that we had designed the site and then picked up the phone to let us know their happiness is just plain cool.

Her name was Pam and she sure made our day start off great in the Five office.

Pam let me know that the combination of visual elegance and how easy the website was to use and navigate made her want to call and thank us.  The website she’s referring to is Simonson’s Salon & Spa, which we redesigned earlier this year.

With the end goal of our web designs always being user satisfaction, it was great to get a first hand account of this.

Sure analytics, conversions and all that user data goodness can let you know it’s a job well done, but having Pam take the time to call you is rock solid.

This year we’ll be putting out a series of posts on web design usability since it’s such an important piece of a websites success. Many will be very simple improvements that anyone can do.

For those of you new to the term Usability, it covers how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process. So in short: making it easy to use your website.

First up we’ll take a look at an easy adjustment for any website to make, making your web content easier to read.

Rid your website of long blocks of content and use sub-headings and one or two sentence paragraphs.  This simple rule easily makes your content easier to digest and a more scanable read.

Here is the wrong way to display content:

Here is the right way to make content easy to read:

So take a look at your website’s content and keep these usability tips in mind.  It’s simple to make these adjustments and improve your site quickly:

• Avoid large blocks of content (blocks=boring)
• Use 1 to 2 sentence paragraphs when possible
• Use sub-headers (size or color variance used correctly)
• Use bullet points or other call-outs

Give your page the scan test.  Can you look at it for 10 seconds and grasp what it’s about?  If not, apply the tips above and see your improvement take shape.

In making your content easier to digest for your user, you will likely make it easier for search engines as well to understand what your page is about … but the SEO benefits of usability, that’s a whole other blog post.