Does your website facilitate the new breed of laymab users?

There is a dramatic surge in the number of layman users

Internet has got virtually deep down penetration across the globe, and the profile of its users has also gone a sea change. Over the years, the internet has come out from the prerogative of select users of scientific and defense community to mass accessibility. And probably this is the temperament of this so called cyber age where people have just started to treat computers as just another thing that is indispensable to modern human existence.

Today the use of computers is not necessarily confined to high–tech professionals, but has spanned over all functions and disciplines including common man for his everyday’s purposes. Hence, there is a awful number of users who browse through the Internet on a periodic basis, and their surfing skills are at best rudimentary. Time is ripe for making your web site superbly user friendly.

This new breed of users with minimal exposure to browsing is vulnerable to encounter a little more difficulty in even a web site that is otherwise user friendly. Here is an important point not to be missed out that this new breed of surfers can be a great prospect for your site when their needs are understood and correspondingly catered to.

The need of the moment is to make your site excessively user friendly so that they are not lost on the web, and they do not just wind up browsing in sheer hopelessness. They need to be guided through simplistic features to help them know what to do next in order to get what they are looking forward to.

This sort of users lacks fundamental competence to search the stuff on the Internet effectively, faces hiccups in navigating web site and looks in astonishment while dealing with typical annoyances on the web. Their utter inability to understand your site often lead them to another site in search of ease, and it does constitute losses for you!
Designing your web site in such a manner as will enable them to learn quickly and steer clear the way to enriching experience is what is required in this regard.

But before making your web site layman friendly, it is essential to get the pulse of the browsing tendencies and habits of layman users.

An insightful look at the online behavior of layman users

Here are some interesting observations on the typical behavior of relatively new users while they use the Internet.

It is quite amazing to learn that new users have been found to practice a novel method to log on to a particular web site whose URL is known to them. They have been observed to type in the URL in Google search, and subsequently clicking on same URL in the returned search pages.

A report from Metacrawler, an Internet research firm, reveals the fact that search queries like "hotmail.com", "www.hotmail.com", "Google", "Yahoo” etc. are among the top search engine queries. It implicitly proves that people do not seem to know that they can access any site by simply typing its URL in the browser address bar.

While going through the returned search pages of Google, new users tend to read the titles of the pages, which they think are closest to their search criteria, and click on such hyperlinks. Hence, the titles of the pages in search results have to be strategically written.

Haphazard pieces of information clustered all through the page not only confuse the users but also scare them. Unsystematic organization of content on the page and a low count on readability make them feel that desired information is non-existent on the page. The randomness of content simply turns them off because they do not bother to look deep; they just scan and skip.

It has been found that new users are not comfortable with pop-up advertisement windows. They mistakenly close other windows, ponder over how to go back, or even close dial-up connection in their attempt to deal with the pop-ups. It has been seen that layman users are not at ease to manage multiple browser windows.

Helping layman users to browse with confidence and convenience

In the light of the above observations, a couple of simplistic features might be added to your web site in order to tap the traffic of layman users. Definitely such features will be contributing to the overall usability of your site in a positive way.

You can not afford to miss the listing of your web site in prominent search engines. It has nothing to do with your offline advertising campaign however aggressive it might be. Such advertisement will of course help your URL gain popularity, but chances are not distant that some new users end up complaining that your web site could not be accessed. Not to mention here, getting listed in the search engines has got its own bundle of benefits.

If you wish to have your own start page for the users of your site, it pays to place search engine links or a search box onto that page. This will help layman users to stick to your start page.

It is clear now that the titles of the pages in search results are crucial for clickthroughs. Therefore, the title of your page should be in accordance with the key words you are optimizing the page for. The title should be enticing and relevant enough to be clicked on. Each page of your site has to be individually optimized for a particular key word for a good traffic.

There can not be any hard and fast rules in using pop-ups and newsletter subscription windows. It essentially depends on the proficiency level of users who visit the site. It is always preferable to have test run of such features before implementing them throughout the site. Once you experience the loss of traffic due to such features, it is a subtle indication that such features are not for your site. The crowd visiting this site is dominantly layman users, and hence it is to be a lot more user friendly.

The learning advantage

In short, capitalizing on the idiosyncrasies and rudimentary skills of this new breed of Internet users can open the gateway of more traffic and hence more revenues that can eventually translate into your web success.

Improving Usability for Screen Reader Users

Simply ensuring your website is accessible to screen reader users is unfortunately not enough to ensure these users can find what they're looking for in a reasonably quick and efficient manner. Even if your site is accessible to screen reader users, its usability could be so incredibly poor that they needn't have bothered coming to your site.

Fortunately, there are plenty of simple-to-implement guidelines you can follow, which not only drastically improve usability for screen reader users, but for all web users:

1. Descriptive headings

The use of on-page headings is one of the most important usability features for screen reader users, as it helps them more easily understand the page structure. Although text on the page may appear to be a heading for sighted users, it must be labelled as a heading within the HTML code for screen reader users to know it is a heading.

Screen readers don't look at web pages - they read through the HTML code. If a piece of text is called a heading within the HTML code then the screen reader will announce that it's a heading. If not, screen reader users won't actually know if something that visually appears to be a heading is actually a heading.

Another usability benefit of using headings for screen reader users, is that these users can call up a list of on-page headings and jump to the section of the page in which they're most interested. This works in much the same way as sighted web users scanning through web pages by glancing at headings. If headings are descriptive of the content contained beneath them it becomes far easier for screen reader users to find the information which they're after.

2. Descriptive link text

Screen reader users can browse through web pages by calling up a list of on-page links, and activating the link in which they're most interested. As such, non-descriptive link text such as ‘click here' should be avoided at all costs as it makes no sense whatsoever out of context.

The good news is that the use of descriptive link texts represents a usability benefit for everyone. When we scan through web pages, one of the items that stands out to us is link text. ‘Click here' is totally meaningless to web users scanning through pages and forces users to hunt through surrounding text to discover the link destination.

3. Lists

Using lists within the HTML code is extremely useful for screen reader users, as screen readers announce the number of items in each list before reading out the list items. This helps these users know what to expect when hearing a list of items (such as site navigation).

This works in mush the same way as an answer phone telling you how many messages you have, before listening to them. By informing you of how many messages you have, you instantly know what to expect. If there's only one or two messages you can probably remember them; much more and you'll probably want to get a pen and paper and make notes.

The use of lists is really just a behind-the-scenes change to the code and needn't affect the visual appearance of the website.

4. Logical linearization

Screen reader users generally have to listen to web pages from start to finish, top to bottom, left to right. Sighted web users on the other hand can glance through a web page almost randomly, spotting important information wherever it may appear on the page. Because of this, important information should always be placed towards the top of the page.

One example of how not to do this is to place instructions for a form at the bottom of the page.

Placing important information towards the top of the page actually benefits everyone, as the important information is now in the place where sighted users look first - the top of the page.

5. Short, succinct ALT text

ALT text is the alternative text for images that gets read out to screen reader users. Any website offering even basic accessibility will provide this alternative text. Some websites try to over-explain the information conveyed by images, forcing screen reader users to have to listen to a lot of unnecessary and irrelevant information.

Screen reader users often take longer than sighted web users to work through websites, so help make their surfing time easier with succinct ALT text.

6. Short, front-loaded paragraphs

Front-loading means placing the conclusion first, followed by the what, why, when, where and how. By placing the conclusion first, screen reader users can instantly gain an understanding of what the paragraph's about. They can then decide whether they want to keep on listening or if they want to skip to the next paragraph (which they can easily do with the screen reader). If the paragraphs are short, they can do this safe in the knowledge that they won't be missing extra information.

Front-loading content obviously benefits everyone, as web users no longer have to search around for the main point of each paragraph.

7. Descriptive page title

The page title is the very first thing that screen reader users hear when arriving at any web page, so it's truly essential that it's descriptive of the page. Again, this benefits everyone as users can use the page title to orientate themselves and confirm that they're on the page they think they're on. This is especially true for web users on dial-up connections where the page title displays a number of seconds before the rest of the page.

Conclusion

There are a number of relatively simple and painless things that can be done to improve usability for screen reader users. Fortunately, nearly all of them improve usability for all web users, meaning everyone benefits - which is never a bad thing.