How to Improve the Usability of Your Website
No matter how good your website design looks, if visitors can’t quickly find what they came for, it’s not doing its job. Usability is about removing friction – making it effortless for someone to get the information, product or answer they arrived for.
Here are the areas that make the biggest difference.
Readable typography
If you have large blocks of text, give the lines enough breathing room – the longer a line of text, the more line-height it needs to stay comfortable to read. Body text should generally sit around 16-18px minimum, especially on mobile, where cramped, tiny fonts are one of the fastest ways to lose a reader.
Easy content discovery
If your site has a large amount of content, make it simple for visitors to find the specific piece they’re after. Clear categories, an on-site search function, and a logical menu structure all help. If someone has to hunt for what they want, they’ll leave and find a competitor who made it easier.
Fast loading speed
Site speed expectations have tightened enormously. Most visitors now judge a site within the first couple of seconds – not the 15 seconds tolerated in the past – and Google’s Core Web Vitals make loading speed a direct ranking factor as well as a user experience one. Compress your images, avoid unnecessary plugins, and test your site regularly, particularly on mobile connections.
No broken links
Broken links damage your credibility and frustrate visitors who hit a dead end. Check your site’s links regularly – tools like Google Search Console will flag crawl errors, and a periodic manual check catches anything that’s slipped through, especially after a redesign or content migration.
Accessible for everyone
Sufficient colour contrast, descriptive alt text on images, and a site that works properly with keyboard navigation and screen readers aren’t optional extras anymore – they widen your audience and are increasingly factored into how search engines assess site quality.
Not sure how your site is performing? We’re happy to run a usability and technical audit – get in touch with Web Marketing Angels.