As usable as a payment gateway: Is your website user friendly?

While most of us are quite adept at surfing the internet, finding what we need, and buying what we want, there are still quite a number of people who find it difficult to understand some of the nuances of the internet. For those running an eCommerce website, these people are still potential customers, and a lot of them really do want to try buying off products and services from the internet, they're just finding it a little difficult to understand.

The issue of a website's ease of use is not strictly limited to those who are a bit challenged in understanding it, there are also those who are very familiar with the internet, but would rather not waste their time browsing through a website that's not really easy to use. How can this issue be solved?

Let us take a cue from some websites that make it a point to be the epitome of usability: payment gateways. By whatever business name they go by, either as payment gateways, credit card processors, or merchant account providers, these online payment solutions ensure that their websites are highly usable and fool-proof, and that accounts for a good percentage of their business. Here are some of the more observable things you can do to make your website user friendly.

Website loading speed. Do you know just how fast your website loads, taking into account the various internet connection speeds? You may have the luxury of having excellent connection speed, maybe as good as 100 mbps, sadly, the rest of the world is still trailing way behind your speed, maybe even as bad as 56 kbps. Here is a cold, hard fact: a browser may not want to wait for more than 10 to 15 seconds for your website to load. You'd be lucky if the browser actually waits for your site to completely load, or even try several times and refresh their browser in hopes your site loads faster.

Compatibility with browsers. This is something that webmasters and browsers both take for granted, as most people simply choose to believe everyone uses Internet Explorer to browse through the internet. Reality check: Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera are also garnering their fair share of users when surfing through the internet. Once you've satisfied yourself with the knowledge that your site looks good on one browser, try viewing it using other browsers, and see how it fares with the others.

Check, check, and check your links. This cannot be stressed enough. One of the most annoying things a browser may experience is seeing an interesting point in your website, then clicking on the link to go to it, then end up finding that the link is either broken, or worse, a blind link that goes to another site. Bear in mind: each broken link exponentially decreases your traffic, as browsers will definitely go someplace else.

Ex the red X. Of course you put thumbnails of images on your website, it saves you some space to put in some more useful information along with the image, besides, they could always click on the image to see the larger flash image it leads to, right? Wrong. Do not assume that everyone has the plug-in that is needed to open the flash you included in your design. It is always a good idea to include a link to the plug-in needed to open the image, and while you're at it, include an HTML version, in case there are people who just really don't want the plug-in.

Be the browser. It wouldn't hurt you to become a browser yourself from time to time. Click on some sites you think is interesting, and take note why it interests you. Chances are, the same thing that interested you about the site you visited will also interest other people, so it may be a good idea to try if also works on your website.

These are just some tips on how to make your website a bit more user-friendly, as it goes without saying that for your site to earn, it must definitely be as friendly to browsers as it can be.