Web Applications: Usability + Practicality = Success

Thanks to the new web design concepts have been incorporated in recent years. You can find places that serve simple but with a simplicity and ease of use that fail to capture the attention of a large audience until it attractive to offer.

Thus we see sites that provide users online applications practical and very usable (calendars, bookmarks managers, subject directories, photo managers, etc). Not innovate anything, is true, just perfect services were always in one way or another.

One of the factors that produced this tendency to simplify Web 2.0 is complete. That is just think about the user. This will create highly optimized sites and easy to use. Where access is more because access is not limited to a single group of tech-savvy users. Thus we see that the characteristics of users are very different (age, knowledge, access speed, etc.)

The question then is how do you achieve this kind of highly usable sites? The issue goes far beyond what we can talk in this article. However we can give you some suggestions.

Sums up to a minimum:

Users need to read only what is necessary. Neither more nor less. This applies to what we write as a guide for group use as links. Avoid extensive listings of links. If you can not reduce the number of links, using a generator tagclouds to do more "findable" everything. Create hierarchical and ordered more categories correctly, uses short records listings.

Simplify the look:

This does not mean neglecting the design of your site, no,. It is optimized with few resources, and log a good graphic design. For this you have to mind the main design concepts. A great help is the use of CSS and XHTML.

However, many site creators to download all your bullets in the shocking aspect of your site. This is fine. Because one thing is a web application where the user interacts with many functions, and another is a commercial site of a product or service has to be noted as presented.

Images as references:

Many fall into the mistake of not using any pictures for reference or highlight particular section, for fear of sin in its use and interfere with the design or usability. The truth is that all the evidence and statistics such as "heatmap" showing that users almost deliberately clicks on the images. That way if you need to prioritize certain page you can use them.

Special fonts and their properties:

The fashion Web 2.0 implements almost mandatory to use large font size (16px or more). This gives a significant readability. However, the abuse of this resource can make to misuse the empty epacios so necessary in the design. That's why the variation of sizes and colors of fonts along with the classical properties of fonts (bold, italic, etc.) will make our message is understandable and at a glance.

Using AJAX

The use of AJAX does not guarantee success in a web application. The large amount of time spent in hours of programming can make as much time programming costs soar. However, it should be noted that is highly valued by users when the interfaces are intuitive, dynamic and practical. Adapting the use of this technology can provide us with our work enormously usability. The idea is that is only used when necessary.

Conclusion:

The success of a Web application, depends, as we said at the beginning of this article, on many factors. But there is no doubt that the ease of use, both in usability and in the process of using provide a significant added value. To check a vast list of web 2.0 applications and see which online services that have succeeded are very usable, provide an enjoyable and provide a simple but practical service.