These days, people love reading newspapers and magazines online. If you take a look at the number of subscribers of New York Times and Boston Globe, you will realize the popularity of digital content. While designing a newspaper, magazine or any other type of content heavy website, readability matters the most.

Here are some guidelines that will help you design the content in a user friendly manner.

1.    Content Navigation Methods – A quality web design attracts readers, helps them scan the pages effortlessly and improves user experience. Some designers think that multiple content sorting methods are helpful for readers and clutter the layout with unnecessary navigation options. Several websites highlight “most read” and “recommended by Facebook friends” article links, but if nobody is really clicking on them, then they are simply wasting the space.

You should try Google Analytics and see how people like to navigate news websites. Do they like navigational links or type the keyword in search bar? Ask the web programming expert to design a simple tab based navigation system for your site and give the readers one click access to all important articles. People don’t like a cluttered website. Hence, remove anything that is eating up valuable space in your site.

2.    Experiment with Type and Spacing – Typeface has a huge impact on the beauty and readability of text content. Select the typeface very carefully because people will access your site from different devices. For instance, a reader can access your site from a desktop computer, a tablet and a smartphone. Each of these devices has different screen size and resolution. Some readers define custom font size, while some change the screen brightness. No matter what modification the end user does, your content must be readable under all conditions.

Choose the fonts that are specifically created for digital content. Publish some content in your site and take feedback from your team and selected readers. Are they happy with font style and line spacing? If you get any negative feedback, take the necessary steps.

3.    Respectful Advertising - There is a stark difference between print media ads and web ads. Readers of a printed magazine don’t tear the pages to remove an ad, but when they see an ad in websites, they immediately start looking for the “close” button.

Magazines select relevant ads so that readers don’t get annoyed. Unfortunately, site owners publish any ad in their site without considering the content of the ad. Web ads are mostly garish and stupid, because web marketers think that loud and colorful ads can grab readers’’ attention. On the contrary, it diminishes viewers’ interest.

Suggest your marketing team to select some sensible and relevant ads for your site. For instance, if you have a magazine site, then you can publish ads of third party news apps. When you display useful ads in your site, people pay attention to it and stay longer in your site.

Placement of ads is also very important. Make sure that your ads don’t hinder readability or distract the readers. Place the ads in sidebar area to give your readers an uninterrupted reading experience.

4.    Check Google Analytics – Once the site is designed; start using Google Analytics to understand user behavior and modify the site design and content placement accordingly. If you see that most of the readers are accessing your site from tablets, then optimize your layout for tablets to offer a better user experience.

5.    Ask Your Audience - Instead of taking any whimsical decision, ask your readers what they like and don’t like about your content. Conduct a survey and then modify the user interface of your site. You may think that political news should be given high priority, but if majority of your readers tell you that they want to see more sports related news in headlines, then do the needful.

For a newspaper/magazine site design, you should hire a website design company . Professional designers know the importance of readability and they design the layout properly. These content design and placement suggestions are only for news and magazine websites. If you want to design an ecommerce site or a portfolio, then content organization is not a big issue for you.

Usability of a e-commerce site and shopping cart decides the fate of an online business. Web users visit online stores to buy products easily and if your shopping cart creates an obstruction in the shopping process, buyers may leave your site without purchasing products. From finding a product to payment options, everything is crucial in an online store.

While searching for shopping cart solutions online, you should check their features, data processing capabilities and security tools to find out the best shopping cart solutions for your site. Here are some usability guidelines that will help you increase your online business.

1.    Use Headings and Breadcrumbs- Give a bold page heading in every page to let the customers realize which page they are visiting. You should also provide breadcrumbs and help the customer go back to previous pages any time.

2.    Contact Information Must Be Visible- Strong customer relationship is the key to success in online business. Therefore, give your phone number and email address near the header area to help the customers contact you instantly.

3.    Site Search Function- Reputed shopping cart solutions have inbuilt powerful search tool. If your website does not have a search function, you should hire a programmer and ask him to develop a search tool for your site. Place the search tool just below menu bar to make your site user friendly.

4.    Show Related Products Just before Payment- When a customers adds a product to the shopping cart, show him some related items to increase your sales figure. For instance, if someone buys a mobile phone, you can ask him to check compatible headphones and phone covers. Let the customer add additional items easily without going back to the main product page again.

5.    Allow Buyers to Add Products to the Cart before Asking for Registration- Some web users visit several e-commerce websites to compare the prices and then take a final decision. If you ask the customers to sign up in order to add products to the shopping cart, they will be very disappointed. Let them surf and add products to the shopping cart without registration and when they reach “check out” page, request them to sign up or sign in.

6.    Cart Content Should Be Easily Modified- Some people place bulk orders in e-commerce sites and for their benefit, you should provide user friendly shopping cart content modification options. For instance, if someone adds one book to the shopping cart and later decides to buy four copies of the same book, he should be able to change quantity from the shopping cart. Don’t compel him to add the same product four times.

7.    Place Add-to-Cart Button Properly- Add to cart button is one of the most important elements of an e-commerce site. Design a large “add to cart” button and place it next to the image of a product.

8.    Show Availability of Products- You must inform the customers whether a product is available or out of stock in the product page. If a product is not available, request your customers to leave their email address and send a notification mail when the product is available.

9.    Offer Multiple Payment Options- Offer various payment options to your customers to increase conversion rate. When you buy the shopping cart software for your site, ask the vendor about payment methods. Good shopping cart solutions provide credit card/debit card/internet banking and cash on delivery facility. It also allows you to connect the payment gateway with your business account.

10.    Send a Confirmation Mail- Once the payment is done, send a confirmation mail to the customer and inform him about expected product delivery date. If your shopping cart software does not have this feature by default, then remove it and buy a shopping cart solution that comes with mail sending facility.

Following these usability guidelines you will be able to provide hassle free shopping experience to the customers and boost your business. If your existing site lacks some of these usability features, hire a web programming services company to fix usability issues.

User experience is easy to forget in a flurry of design elements and textual content. But web users is what makes or breaks a website and so, giving it the attention it deserves may not be such a bad idea.

User Objective Defines Website Structure

When you start designing a site, by all means, concentrate on its technicalities such as the design layout, the goal of the website and additional features to be included to make it more attractive. But, in the mad rush for a quality web design, consider the fact that pimping the look of anything is only good so far as an onlooker finds it worthy of use.

So, pay attention to user objective. Find out what it is and then plan a layout that will help visitors find their way to goal fulfillment. Identifying user objective is the first step to understanding their web psyche and creating a suitable design flow.

Ease of Use = to User Experience

Users visiting your site from different sources will have different levels of knowledge. You have to understand their requirements and develop the website architecture accordingly.

You could be a net savvy teenage bop searching for dates on dating sites or a 60 something man searching for gout home remedies. Your level of knowledge on the internet are bound to be different. Of course, the design and layout of these two site genres will be vastly different, but where usability is concerned, one may yet be wanting.

Point is, for anyone spending at least 5 hours on the internet everyday, is easier to spot ways to navigate to the goal. On the contrary, for someone who only switches on the computer in need, navigating through even a mildly complicated website can be difficult.

Should Your Aim be to Convert a Casual Visitor into a Customer, Always?

By all means, YES! So how is user experience related?

In-your-face marketing = negative impact = bad user experience = never visiting you again.

Don’t bombard your users with banner ads, text ads, pop-up windows, or cute Flash bunnies asking him to buy stuff. Provide him with informative and genuinely useful content before thrusting him forward into emptying his wallet.

Give your visitors a reason to move forward and win his trust gradually. Organize your content, tell him the benefit of your products/services and highlight the call-to-action button.

Focus on newsletter subscription, because the potential buyer will generally want to know more about a company before buying their products. And make sure your newsletters are informative, plus has a couple of 2/3 line promotional content coaxing a subscriber to buy things. For instance, if a customer is seeking web design solutions,  remind him that you offer affordable  services between providing him with tips…and not vice versa. You aim should not be just promotion (or even if it is, you wouldn’t want the customer to know).

Clients can hire expert web designers from website design company India to fulfill their business objectives. Designing a layout is not that difficult, but designing a site considering user experience is quite challenging. So, next time you design a site, consider visitors’ goals and plan a design accordingly.

The concept of offshore staffing came into existence only because of one reason, cost reduction. Developing countries like India have huge human resource and they offer extremely affordable rates for all IT related services.

The concept of offshore staffing came into existence only because of one reason, cost reduction. Developing countries like India have huge human resource and they offer extremely affordable rates for all IT related services.

If you are not aware of the benefits of offshoring, start reading the points mentioned below.

• Get Access to Talent - Indian web development companies employ expert web designers and developers to offer quality services. Hence, when you hire a website designer from an offshore IT firm, he takes full responsibility of your project and designs a user friendly website.

• Save Project Cost – Hiring an Indian web developer, you can save up to 50% money. He will work dedicatedly on your project, offer better output, but charge you less money for his services.

• Delegate to be Efficient – A USA-based famous developer works on multiple projects at the same time and can’t pay equal attention to each project. On the other hand, when you pick a team of web developers from an Indian company, they work only on your project and pay attention to every small detail.

• Benefit from a One-Stop Solution - Most web development companies in India offer various services under one roof. Hence, if you need a web designer, programmer, content writer and SEO expert, you can hire all of them from one company.

• Eliminate Recruiting Costs – Outsourcing is a great option for USA based web design companies as well. For instance, if you don’t have any content writer in your office, instead of appointing a new writer, you can outsource the content writing jobs to overseas companies and focus on your own projects. A permanent employee will ask for a hefty salary, medical and pension benefits etc. but an offshore staff will never bother you for any privileges.

• Enjoy Flexible Work Hours - Offshore companies work day and night to meet project deadlines. They will offer a number of communication methods and change the shifts according to your time zone.

When you hire a programmer or designer from an offshore company, make sure that they are trustworthy. Ask the service provider to sign a written contract so that they can’t steal or sell your data to anyone else.