What is usability?
The term usability is probably pretty self explanatory; in the website design and development industry usability refers to how easy it is for your users to navigate your website, consume your content, and find what they're looking for. Usability is absolutely pivotal to all aspects of website design. If your website is not clear and easy to use, you can bet that your users will find one that is.
Information Architecture
A huge element of usability is how you design and implement your information architecture. The term information architecture can sound a little daunting, but it's actually a pretty simple concept. How you categorize your web pages and structure your links, that is, what your users need to click on in order to get to specific web pages within your website, is your information architecture.
Remember that your website should be focused on providing access to your content in the most intuitive way possible, and as such, you should have a clear understanding of what content you'll be offering your users before you begin designing your website's architecture. Once you've got a list of what you'll be offering your users, you can move on to how you expect them to find it.
Often, a long list of links to all the unique pieces of content in your website is too overwhelming for users, and can cause them to become irritated or frustrated. Categorizing your content into an easily digestible number of groups, say four to seven, and using big, prominent links to those categories makes the prospect of finding what they need much less intimidating to your users. How should you categorize the content in your website? A lot of the time, especially with small to mid-sized websites, you can create a usable architecture with a bit of common sense. For example, things like company history, staff profiles and company philosophy can probably go in an "About" section pretty safely. It's not always so black and white though, and in more complicated scenarios you may want to conduct some research.
Learning about the best way to categorize your content can be as easy as getting feedback from normal, everyday people. Card sorting is a great, simple technique that uses a stack of index cards, a pen, and a couple volunteers to provide insight about the relationships between your content. This insight can then be used to structure your information architecture more deliberately, and make sure your users can always find what they're looking for without a fuss. You can learn more about card sorting by conducting a simple google search.
Using good labels
Using the right text for links is surprisingly important. Generally speaking, there are two concerns when deciding how to label your links. First, it's imperative that the label describes the content it is linking to in plain English, and second, your label should strengthen your brand or coin company products and terms where appropriate. If your labels make it difficult for users to find content, or if they feel misled by your labels, it is likely that they'll become frustrated. On the other hand, you never want to pass up the opportunity to improve your users understanding of, and relationship with your brand.
Labels are another great area to solicit feedback from volunteers. Exercises as simple as writing down a description of your different pieces of content on index cards and asking volunteers to create their own labels can provide plenty of helpful insight. Another useful exercise is providing some volunteers with just the labels of your links, and asking them to describe what they imagine the content will consist of.
