Website design is important and what the user experiences is even more important. In all good web design, the visitor’s needs should always come first – below are 5 More Usability findings by Smashingmagazine.com including size of the search box, white space for readability, website testing, importance of information for product pages and how users interact with advertising.

1. The ideal search box is 27 characters

Jakob Nielsen performed a usability study on the length of search queries in website search boxes (Prioritizing Web Usability) with the finding that the majority of today’s search boxes are too short (18 pixels). Even though you can type out a long query, only a portion of the text will be visible at a time, making it difficult to review or edit what you’ve typed. Extending the box to 27 characters has found to have a 90% increase of conversions. In short, search boxes are better to be too wide than to be too short.

2. White space is better for reading

White space is the empty space in-between paragraphs, graphics and other elements on a page. White space de-clutters a page making scanning content more comfortable. When used appropriately, it can also help elements stand out.

3. Effective testing need not be extensive

Jakob Nielsens tests show that the ideal number of test in usability for a website is that only 5 users would reveal about 85% of all the problems with your wesite whereas 15 users would find pretty much all problems. The biggest issues are normally picked up by the first 2 users and the following users will confirm.

4. Informative pages help you stand out

If your website sells products – people who are shopping online will defiantly look at the product details. Therefore, it is important to provide plenty of information – in this case, providing too much information is better than not enough. However, take note of how you word your content – make sure it is easy to digest, scannable and does not have jargon that your target audience may not understand. The more information your product has, the more confidence you build with your customer. And ALWAYS use pictures.

5. Users are blind to advertising

When a user enters a site, they will scan for the information they need and often will ignore the advertising banners completely. If they are interested in a particular snippet of content on the page, the banners on the side will not distract them. However, they will also ignore anything that looks like an advertisement. Therefore, any graphics or call to action buttons you may use – make sure they don’t look like an ad. If you struggle to not make it look like an ad – make sure the style is the same as the website, so that is fits in together.