Stop Wasting My Time – by user

Apart from being a producer of user interfaces and experiences, I’m also a consumer. And every time I find a site that has poor implementation regarding user experience and usability – I tend to leave that site immediately. Usually that is what any user will do instead of wasting time.

In this post I will list some of the most important paths a designer should embrace when designing a user interface or optimizing one.

Make your Call to Action buttons visible

I’ve visited many websites with this problem: Inaccessible or low visibility Call-to-Action buttons. When designing a page, a user interface – the first thing you must consider is the placement of your CTA buttons. In this way you will get the right feedback from your CTA buttons. Then, it matters how the buttons look – usually we should make the buttons stand-out and be easy to identify from the content.

Reduce the number of clicks

I’m not that picky regarding this matter, but when I have to click 7-8 times in order to download a file – that poses as a big problem. As a practice, I tend to keep my clicks in the websites I make – around 3-4. In this way you force yourself not only to create a better user experience, but also to have a good architechture behind your site.

Define a goal

Every website should have a goal. By setting that in the beginning you save precious time both from yourself and the user. Also try and lead the user to the same goal through elements in your user interface. This can only mean less wasted time for the user.

Speed-up your website

Another criteria against wasting users’ time is to have a fast site. This means that the user will focus on finding the content instead of waiting for the content to load. There are numerous resources on how to improve your site speed. So please consider speeding-up your site.

Conclusion

Having these ideas in mind, you will achieve a nice user experience which can be translated into less wasted time and productive interaction. Cheers!

Andy Gongea is a passionate UI/UX designer with a great appetite for technology and trends. Currently he owns, a future wife, a loan that comes with a monthly fee and some strange ideas about user interface and user interaction. Cheers!

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