User-Friendly Website Checklist
How does your website stack up?
Could your site be losing visitors unnecessarily?
Why you need a user-friendly website:
- A more usable site means more scrolls, clicks, leads and sales
- People will quickly leave your site if they don’t like it eg slow to load, hard to use on a phone, hard to find stuff
- If you want free search traffic, Google has to like your site
- Site usability is a key Google ranking factor
- Google measure how long people stay on your site after clicking to it from search results, they call it “dwell time.” If people leave your site and keep searching, looking for a better answer, your site gets a black mark.
User-Friendly Website Checklist
Most Important Usability Factors
- Fast load speed
- Mobile friendly
- Useful content
- Easy to use
Navigation and Structure
- Clear call-to-action buttons
- Search functionality
- Breadcrumb navigation for larger sites
- "Back to top" button for long pages
- Contact information easily accessible
- Footer with important links/info
Accessibility
- Alt text for images
- Sufficient color contrast
- Keyboard navigation support
- Text that's easy to read (good font size and contrast)
- Captions/transcripts for videos
User Experience
- Forms that are easy to complete
- Progress indicators for multi-step processes
- Clear error messages
- Consistent design across pages
- Limited pop-ups and ads
- Auto-complete for search/forms where appropriate
- Visible hover states on clickable elements
Content Presentation
- Scannable text with headings and short paragraphs
- White space for visual breathing room
- Printer-friendly pages where relevant
- PDF/downloadable versions of important content
- Multiple contact methods (phone, email, chat)
Performance
- Content loads "above the fold" first
- Compressed images
- Minimal use of heavy scripts
- Browser caching enabled
- Optimized for different browsers
Google Core Web Vitals (Performance & UX)
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – Measures loading performance (aim for under 2.5s)
- First Input Delay (FID) / Interaction to Next Paint (INP) – Measures interactivity (aim for quick response time under 200ms).
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – Measures visual stability (avoid elements shifting unexpectedly)
Security & Trustworthiness
- SSL certificate (HTTPS) enabled
- No mixed content (HTTPS + HTTP elements)
- Cookie consent and privacy policy easily accessible
- Minimal use of intrusive pop-ups
- Trust signals (customer testimonials, security badges, reviews, case studies)
SEO Considerations
- Meta titles and descriptions optimized
- SEO-friendly URL structure
- Schema markup for rich results
- Open Graph tags for social sharing
- Canonical tags to avoid duplicate content issues
- Properly structured headings (H1, H2, H3 hierarchy)
- Internal linking strategy
- XML sitemap and robots.txt configured
Technical Aspects
- Lazy loading for images/videos
- Deferring non-essential JavaScript
- Minified CSS and JavaScript
- Proper 404 error handling (custom page, helpful suggestions)
- Favicon set
- No broken links (run a link check regularly)
Mobile-Specific Enhancements
- Tap targets (buttons/links) are large enough to click easily
- Avoid horizontal scrolling
- Optimize images for different screen sizes
- Optimize images for different screen sizes