When looking at designing and developing any business website, the terms, accessibility, usability and responsive web design (RWD) are three elements that should be considered. Indeed, all of your website pages should be implemented using responsive web design techniques. Responsive web design (RWD) was a website design methodology that was thought up and written about in 2011 by designer, Ethan Marcotte. Responsive website design is an essential ingredient for formatting images, video clips, text, widgets, and other website components. Whether it is an intranet site like Microsoft SharePoint, which allows internal members to access a portion of your website, or an extranet site that the entire Internet can see, the idea of usability and accessibility should be topics that take precedence for the construction of your business website.
What Makes RWD, Accessibility, and Usability Such Important Elements?
For your potential visually-impaired customers, who want to buy that bright green coat, tie, shoes or other items need a website that will be structured to address their needs. Providing “alt tags” that best describe your product images is an excellent way to make your website for your visually impaired users to purchase your items. Accessibility is a relevant term to remember since it applies to your visitors who are impaired or impeded by another physical issue. Whether the visitor to your site has no visual impairments, or they are colour blind, or partially or entirely blind, the idea is to keep their requirements in mind. Using the right naming conventions for those appealing images that will be published on your retail website, is a crucial element in making that final sale.
How Are Accessibility and Usability Related?
Accessibility, which is considered a subcategory of usability is a crucial element because all websites should be user-friendly. The time that it takes for website visitors to find what they are looking for should be minimal. Usability is part of this concept. The menu buttons of your website should be large enough for people to click with a mouse or tap with their finger easily. The font size and font type should be appealing enough for those people whose eyesight is not a perfect 20/20. The ability for all your visitors to be able to read the content of the web pages is essential to scoring sales and lessening complaints.
Indeed, it can be very costly not to cover those vital details that involve accessibility, usability, and RWD. However, there are plenty of software tools that you website designers and developers can use to test their web pages to make sure they cover those three key elements of usability, accessibility, and RWD. One of these tools is called Screenfly. You can download the Screenfly app to an iPhone and Android device and just key in the URL of your website. The Screenfly app allows you to view your website in all the current screen sizes, so you can gauge what your site may need design fixing.
In conclusion, it is crucial that business owners who depend on their website being as error-free as possible can rely on these three elements to provide website visitors with a pleasant experience. The goal is to not turn your customers away by having a website that is frustrating for many people to use. And although website owners can make their site very interactive, the loading times for their images and other media like videos are also essential elements to keep in mind when it comes to RWD, accessibility as well as usability. The less time that it takes for a potential customer to accomplish whatever the task is that they are trying to do, the better off that you and your business will be.