Here’s an interesting question – how easy is it to navigate around your website?
In truth it may not be one you’ve ever thought about before. And the reality is, that even if you said “easy enough”, it may not be as easy for your visitors to do the same.
We’ve all heard about the idea of putting yourself in the customer’s position (or in this case, the website visitor). This means you have to think about how they’ll move around your site. What do they want to find or look at? How easy is it for them to do that?
How user-friendly is it?
It can be difficult to answer truthfully, because it’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of your visitors.
You know what your holiday let has to offer, and you know where to find all the pertinent information as well. So, unsurprisingly, it can be hard to be objective.
That’s why you should enlist the help of a few friends who haven’t seen your site, at least not in a long while. Ask them to visit it and take a look round. What do they think of your holiday rental site? How easy is it to navigate around?
Ask them to be frank. Impartial. Critical even. It’s the only way for you to get the feedback you truly need to ensure it’s as user-friendly as it can be.
Create a questionnaire
One idea to make it easier to receive the kind of information you want, is to create a questionnaire.
Send it out to family, friends, colleagues, and get them to respond to each one. You could even have multiple choice options where relevant.
Here are a few suggestions:
- How easy was it to find the booking form/page, or understand how to make a booking?
- How easy were the different rate periods to understand?
- How easy was it to send an enquiry?
- How quickly did the pages load (or not?)
- How quickly could you determine what kind of property it is and any key attributes it has?
- Could you find the blog and all the separate posts on it? (If applicable)
- Did you get frustrated trying to find separate parts of the website?
- Was there anything you wanted to know but couldn’t find out?
Spend some time and you could come up with 10 or so questions that will give you an insight into how other people view your website.
What you’re looking for is honesty; so don’t send it to someone who doesn’t like to give any negative feedback!
The responses should help you identify how easy your website is to navigate i.e. how user-friendly it is.
It will also help you work out what changes need to be made in order to make it even easier to navigate around.
Remember, when someone visits your website, it’s only the first step. You must encourage them to stay. Being user-friendly is one simple way to achieve this objective. If you can’t do that, they’ll disappear within seconds, only to find one of your competitor’s sites instead.
Ease of use
The ease with which people can use and move around your site is equally as important as the style and presentation.
All matter, of course, but if you make the whole site too complex, few people will have the patience to find the pages and information they need.
That’s why it makes sense to view your site dispassionately, so you can work out just how user-friendly it really is.
And there’s no better time to do that than now.
The sooner you look for its faults, the sooner you will be able to change them. This will help people find what they want to know quicker, and most likely, get them sticking around on your site longer – both of which have the ability to encourage more enquiries.
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