User-Friendly Websites

What are user-friendly websites?

User-friendly websites are sites where visitors can reach the information they want without thinking hard or getting tired, whatever device they arrive on. A good look is part of this, but it is not enough on its own. The logic of the menu, the readability of the text, how fast the page opens and how easy the form is to fill in are all part of the same experience.

The focus of this page is corporate sites that describe services, build trust and lead visitors to call, write or ask for a quote. Sales flows such as the cart, checkout and product catalog call for separate expertise; we cover that topic on our e-commerce websites page.

Common signs of user-friendly websites

You do not need to be an expert to tell whether a site is comfortable to use. If most of the points below hold for your site, you are on the right track:

• Visitors understand what you do on the first screen of the home page.
• Menu titles are written with the words your customers use, not your internal terms.
• The phone number, address and quote form are easy to find from every page.
• The page opens without waiting on a mobile connection, and content does not shift while loading.
• The text can be read on a phone screen without zooming in.
• Someone navigating with a keyboard or a screen reader can use the site too.

Who is it a priority for?

Usability matters for every business whose customers look at the site before deciding, but in some industries the effect is felt sooner. Clinics and studios that work by appointment, manufacturers and service companies that collect quote requests, and restaurants and hotels that take reservations come first in this group. Businesses whose site was built for desktop screens years ago and struggles on phones are also among those who benefit most from work on user-friendly websites.

Helping visitors find what they look for: content and menu structure

When designing user-friendly websites, we start not with colors but with why the visitor came to the site. Someone arriving at a clinic’s site looks for examination conditions, the address or the way to book an appointment. A buyer arriving at a manufacturer’s site wants to see the product range, the production capacity and the catalog file. Listing these questions brings out a large part of the page structure by itself.

Starting from visitor tasks

In the first meeting, we write down together the questions your customers ask you most and the things you want them to do on the site. Tasks such as “find out the service area”, “look at sample work” and “ask for a quote” are put in order of importance. For each task, we count how many steps it takes the visitor to reach the result, and we remove unnecessary steps before moving to visual design. User-friendly websites are built around this task list.

Menu and page hierarchy

Keeping a small number of clear titles in the menu reduces the visitor’s decision load. Instead of vague titles such as “Our solutions” or “What we do”, we use words that describe the service itself. On user-friendly websites, visitors can see at any moment which page they are on and how to get back to the section above.

Readable text and page layout

On screen, text is scanned more than it is read from start to finish. Short paragraphs, meaningful subheadings, bulleted lists and enough line spacing make it easier for visitors to find the sentence they are looking for. In user-friendly websites, we treat text not as something poured into the design afterward but as the main material that determines the page layout.

That is why we ask for a draft of the content as early as possible. A page drawn with real headings and real paragraphs leads to far better decisions than a mockup that says “text goes here”.

Forms and ways to get in touch

On a corporate site, most conversions happen through a form, a phone call or a message. Asking only for fields that are really needed, using a visible label above each field and saying clearly in the error message what is missing make the form easier to complete. A short confirmation message telling the person what happens next after they send the form also builds trust.

In mobile-friendly web design, shortcuts such as starting a call when the phone number is tapped and opening the map app when the address is tapped also make the visitor’s job easier. Sometimes visitors want to call right away instead of filling in a form; both paths need to stay open.

Details that build trust

On a corporate site, visitors want to get to know you before they decide. Photos of the real team and venue, a clear address and working hours, examples of completed work and answers to frequently asked questions build that trust. On user-friendly websites, this information is not buried deep in a subpage; it appears right next to the relevant service.

What we pay attention to in mobile-friendly web design

In many industries, a significant share of visits to a site comes from phones; you can see the share on your own site in your analytics tools. That is why, for us, mobile-friendly web design is not a desktop page shrunk afterward. We build the pages on the phone screen first and then extend them toward wider screens. That way we decide from the start what really matters in the narrowest space.

Thumb use and touch targets

On a phone, a site is mostly used with one hand, by the thumb. Buttons and links that are large enough to tap comfortably and not too close to each other reduce wrong taps. WCAG 2.2, at level AA, asks as a rule for touch targets of at least 24×24 CSS pixels, or an equivalent amount of space between targets. In the mobile-friendly web design process, we aim to stay comfortably above this limit.

Mobile menu and fixed contact buttons

On a phone, the menu is the most sensitive point. A “Contact” link lost inside a hidden menu makes it harder for visitors to reach you. That is why we prefer to keep the main action, such as call, message or reservation, fixed in an easy-to-reach place on the screen.

For a newly opened restaurant in Kyiv, we built a simple structure of Reservations, Gallery, Menu and Contact sections. We made it possible for visitors to reach the menu and reservations in a few taps, and to write to the restaurant easily through a fixed contact button. You can find the details on the Celebrity Kiev project page.

Images, tables and long content

A wide photo that looks impressive on desktop can turn into a meaningless strip on a phone. In mobile-friendly web design, we plan images with separate crops for each screen and turn tables into a layout that is readable on a phone. On long service pages, collapsible sections and in-page links keep visitors from losing their way as they scroll.

Testing mobile-friendly web design on real devices

A narrowed browser window on a computer is no substitute for a phone. On real devices, screen notches, address bars that appear and disappear, slow connections and legibility in sunlight give different results. That is why we run mobile-friendly web design tests on phones of different sizes and ages; a page that runs smoothly on an old device usually runs without problems on a new one too.

Tablets and wide screens

Working mobile-first does not mean neglecting wide screens. Landscape and portrait use on a tablet, and lines becoming too long on a large monitor, are checked separately. Keeping the text column at a readable width allows comfortable reading on wide screens too. A page presented on a big screen in a meeting room and the same page opened on a phone on a bus are two different moments of use.

Speed: the invisible side of user-friendly websites

Visitors do not notice a site’s speed as a feature, but they notice slowness right away. web.dev, Google’s resource for web developers, defines three core metrics for loading, response to interaction and visual stability, and calls them Core Web Vitals. For user-friendly websites, we take these metrics into account from the start of the design.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures when the main content of the page appears; 2.5 seconds or less is recommended for a good experience.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures how quickly the page responds to a tap or click; the recommended value is 200 milliseconds or less.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how much content shifts while loading; the recommended value is 0.1 or less.

To see that these thresholds are met for most visitors, it is recommended to monitor the 75th percentile of page loads separately for mobile and desktop. You can find the details of the metrics in web.dev’s Web Vitals guide.

Design decisions that determine speed

Speed is not only a matter of server or code; design decisions have a direct effect too. In the mobile-friendly web design process, we review these elements with you at the start of the project:

• Large autoplaying videos and multi-slide sliders at the top of the home page
• Many different fonts and font weights
• Photos loaded much larger than the size they are shown at on screen
• External add-ons such as chat, map and social media tools added to every page
• Images and announcement bars that push text down because no space is reserved for them while loading

None of these elements is forbidden on its own; what matters is choosing each one knowing what it adds to the page and what it costs. Showing the map only on the contact page, or loading the video when the visitor clicks, are simple decisions that gain speed without giving up the look.

Measuring and monitoring speed

During development we measure with test tools, but the real picture emerges after launch as real visitor data comes in. The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console shows which group of pages has slowed down. Checking speed again when a new add-on or a large image is added keeps user-friendly websites from getting heavy over time.

Accessibility: a site everyone can use

Accessibility means people with differences in vision, hearing, movement or cognition can use your site too. Everyone who watches a video with the sound off on public transport, has trouble seeing the screen in sunlight or is carrying a bag benefits from the same decisions. That is why we treat accessibility not as a feature added to user-friendly websites afterward but as a basic quality.

The international reference is W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). In WCAG 2.2, published by W3C in October 2023, the guidelines are grouped under four principles, perceivable, operable, understandable and robust, and the success criteria are defined at three levels: A, AA and AAA. For details, you can look at W3C’s WCAG 2 overview page.

What we pay attention to in design and code

• Menus, buttons and forms that can be used with the keyboard alone
• A clear focus outline that shows which element you are on when navigating with the keyboard
• Meaningful alt text for images that carry information
• Permanent labels on form fields instead of placeholder text that disappears once you start typing
• Not conveying information by color alone; marking an erroneous field with an icon and text as well
• The page not falling apart when text is enlarged, and headings used in the right order

Color contrast is part of this list too. In the design stage, we check which pairings of your brand colors stay readable as text and background and, if needed, suggest tones of the palette adapted for screens.

Testing accessibility

Automated audit tools catch some problems such as missing alt text or low contrast, but they cannot find all of them. That is why, before launch, we also go through user-friendly websites with the keyboard alone and with the phone’s screen reader. A menu that cannot be reached with the keyboard or a link that a screen reader reads only as “button” shows up easily in these tests.

Our working process for user-friendly websites

Although each project takes shape according to its own needs, the order of the steps is similar. You can see the general frame of our corporate web design service on our services page; below we describe the usability-focused steps.

1. Reviewing the current site

If you have a site, we first use it on a phone, a tablet and a desktop like an ordinary visitor. If there is analytics data, we look at the most visited pages and the pages that are left fastest. Seeing what works determines what needs to be kept in the redesign. We also learn at this stage which sections your team updates most often on the site, because a structure that is hard to update turns into a site that ages over time.

2. Sitemap and wireframe

We draw up the page list and the menu according to visitor tasks. Then, with plain, colorless drawings, we show which information each page gives in which order. A correction made at this stage takes far less effort than one made after the visual design is finished.

3. Visual design

The approved structure turns into visual design with your corporate identity’s colors, typefaces and photographic style. Following the mobile-friendly web design principle, we present each page on the phone screen first and then on wider screens.

4. Development and testing

After the design is turned into code, we test it on different phones, browsers and screen sizes. Before launch, we check that forms reach the right address, that keyboard navigation works and that pages meet the speed metrics.

5. Observation after launch

When real visitors start using the site, the data shows where they get stuck. A form that is abandoned halfway or a button that is never clicked can be improved with small fixes. We set the goals together from the start and report the results regularly.

What determines the scope

It would not be right to quote a timeline and budget for user-friendly websites without listening to your needs. When preparing a quote, we clarify these points with you one by one:

• The number of pages and the variety of content types
• Whether the text, photos and videos are ready
• The need for a multilingual structure
• Connections such as an appointment system, a quote form or customer management software
• Moving the current site and redirecting old addresses

Common mistakes in usability

• Reviewing and approving the site only on a large screen
• Turning the home page into a long showcase where every section promotes itself
• Putting contact details only at the very bottom of the page
• Using pop-ups that keep visitors from seeing the content
• Leaving speed and accessibility until after launch

What to prepare before we start

• The questions your customers ask you most
• The three most important actions you want visitors to take on the site
• Your logo, brand colors and, if you have one, your brand guidelines
• Example sites you find comfortable to use and ones you find hard to use
• If you have one, access to your current site’s analytics data

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between user-friendly websites and modern-looking sites?

A modern look affects the first impression. User-friendly websites let visitors reach the information and the way to get in touch without effort; a good site offers both together.

Do I need a separate mobile site for mobile-friendly web design?

No. In mobile-friendly web design built with a responsive approach, the same site changes its layout according to the screen size. The content and the address stay single, and updates are made in one place.

Can I improve the user experience without redoing my current site?

If the foundation is sound, often yes. Simplifying the menu, shortening forms, reducing image sizes and making contact buttons visible can make a difference without a redesign.

Does site speed affect Google rankings?

Google states that Core Web Vitals metrics are used in its ranking systems; however, a good score alone is not a guarantee of a top position. Above all, speed matters so that visitors can use the site without leaving.

Is accessibility necessary for small businesses too?

An accessible site means more people can get in touch with you. Basic steps such as keyboard navigation, alt text and readable contrast are much easier when planned at the start of the design than when fixed afterward.

How can you tell whether a site is user-friendly?

Form completion rates, the behavior of visitors coming from phones and speed metrics are good indicators. Asking a few of your customers to think aloud while they use the site is also a fast and instructive test.

Let’s review your site together

Share your current site or what you expect from your new one; let’s look together at where your visitors struggle and which steps can build a more comfortable experience. To request a meeting, you can write to us through our contact page.