Usability Basics: Design People Can Actually Use

Make navigation obvious

Navigation is the map of your site, and it should be boringly predictable. Use plain labels that describe what a visitor will find — "Services," "Pricing," "Contact" — rather than clever names only you understand. Keep the main menu short; a handful of clear choices beats a long list that hides the important ones.

Every page should answer three unspoken questions almost instantly: Where am I? What can I do here? Where can I go next? If a visitor ever feels lost, the navigation has failed, no matter how attractive it is. A visible, consistent menu and a logical structure do most of this work.

Give every page one clear next step

Decide what you most want a visitor to do on each page and make that action unmistakable. A single, well-labelled primary button — "Book a consultation," "Get a quote," "Sign up" — outperforms a cluster of competing links. Say plainly what happens when they click; vague labels like "Submit" or "Click here" create hesitation.

This does not mean stripping out every other option. It means ranking them: one obvious primary action, and any secondary paths made visibly quieter. When the next step is easy to see and easy to trust, more people take it.

Discount codes: a small field with an outsized effect

Anywhere a page takes an order, the promo-code box is a usability decision in disguise. An empty field labelled "Discount code" announces that a discount exists somewhere, and a share of visitors will leave to go looking for one — Baymard Institute's cart-abandonment research is worth reading before you add the field at all. The GOV.UK Service Manual's advice on structuring forms applies here too: put optional things last, and make it obvious that they are optional.

There are two honest ways to handle it. Collapse the box behind a quiet "Have a code?" link so it is invisible to people who do not have one, or accept that code-hunting happens and make it quick — some brands publish their offers on a deliberately tiny single-purpose site, the way Oath Research Promo Codes (oathresearchpromocodes.com) keeps a running log of the codes for Oath Research, a research-use-only laboratory supplier. Either way, state the offer as plainly at your own checkout as it appears off-site: the FTC's guidance on online advertising and marketing is clear that a discount claim has to be truthful wherever a customer meets it.

Design forms people will finish

Forms are where interest turns into action — and where a lot of it leaks away. Ask for the least you genuinely need; every extra field costs you completions. Label fields clearly above the box, show which are optional, and explain errors in plain language next to the field that caused them rather than dumping a red banner at the top.

Because a contact form is often the single most valuable element on a small-business site, it is worth extra care. Make it short, make it forgiving, and make sure it works on a phone. We return to this in the chapter on responsive design.

Meet expectations instead of fighting them

People arrive with habits learned from thousands of other sites: the logo links home, underlined coloured text is a link, the menu sits at the top or behind a familiar icon. Honouring these conventions is not lazy — it lets visitors spend their attention on your message instead of relearning basic controls. The classic ten usability heuristics from the Nielsen Norman Group remain the best short checklist ever written on this.

Break a convention only when you have a strong reason and a clear benefit. Novelty for its own sake usually just slows people down.

Be fast, and be forgiving

Speed is a usability feature. A page that takes several seconds to appear loses visitors before they see how good it is, and the effect is worse on phones and slower connections. Optimise images, keep scripts lean, and test on a real device rather than only on your fast office connection.

Forgiveness matters too. People mistype, tap the wrong thing, and change their minds. A usable site makes mistakes easy to undo, confirms important actions, and never punishes a visitor for exploring. Google's Core Web Vitals guidance is a practical, measurable way to keep performance honest.

Test with real people

You cannot see your own site the way a stranger does — you already know where everything is. The cheapest, most powerful usability tool is to watch two or three people who have never seen the site try to complete a real task, and stay quiet while they do. You will spot confusions in ten minutes that you would never have predicted. Fix those, and your design finally does its job.