Last Update Apr 27, 2024 @ 2:24 am

Are you wondering whether your website is ADA-complaint? Is your website accessibility hurting your SEO?

Or are you just wondering how to ensure your website is ADA compliant?

You’re not alone.

In 2018 alone, 2000+ websites faced accessibility lawsuits.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to keep your website accessible to all people regardless of their mental or physical state.

Let’s dive right inside.

What is ADA compliance?

Perhaps you have heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act but you aren’t sure whether it applies to your website. Typically, the ADA guidelines are to be followed by both offline and online businesses.

In the building and construction industry, contractors know they need to comply with the ADA act. Website developers and online business owners also need to make their websites accessible to all people.

In simple terms, website ADA compliance is the process of designing your website with strict adherence to the Americans with Disabilities Act. This includes e-commerce websites, twiftnews websites, etc.

The Act implies that websites should be accessible to persons with disabilities the same way as terminals, elevators, ATMs, etc.

Your website also needs to be usable on all devices including desktop, tablets, laptops, and mobile phones.

This is to make sure that people who are using audio scanners or text readers are also accommodated on your website.

Not only is your website accessibility important when it comes to SEO but you also risk getting subjected to hefty fines if your website doesn’t follow the ADA guidelines.

Applicable areas of the ADA Act

Typically, ADA compliance affects almost all businesses both online and offline.

Basically, ADA compliance applies to the following organizations and companies:

• Private businesses with more than 15 workers.
• Government agencies and state corporations.

Ideally, you want to make sure your business can be accessed by everyone regardless of their accessibility status. So whether you operate a small or large business, you must make sure to follow the ADA guidelines in all your business undertakings.

ADA compliance also affects SEO as well. Given that the number of website visitors a website gets is a signal to Google that your website is providing something of value to your readers, if it can accommodate all people, it may get better Google rankings.

The Implications of not complying with the ADA act when designing your website

As seen above, more than 2000 websites battled lawsuits for not complying with the ADA web design guidelines.

If your website isn’t ADA compliance, then you’re in trouble.

Typically, violating ADA website design standards could see you getting fined up to $75,000. And if you violate the set guidelines for the second or third time, you may be forced to pay up to a fine of $150,000.

Organizations that depend on funding may also not get funds from their donors.

Well, getting fined for not complying with the ADA standards can also ruin your reputation and this could affect your overall sales.

How to check your website for ADA compliance

You can check your website accessibility in two ways:

1. Using tools

Or

2. Audit it manually.

Keep reading to know how to test your website accessibility using tools.

How to test your website accessibility using tools

There are plenty of ADA compliance checker tools out there you can use to test your website’s text size, color contrast, etc.

Some tools check a page after time while others check the overall website.

Remember that your website ADA compliance isn’t something you do once and forget about it.

You’re going to need to adhere to the ADA website design standards as long as your website is live and continues to grow. The same way applies to private businesses and government agencies.

Well, the guidelines aren’t as complicated as you may think.

For instance, when adding images to your website, you need to add the Alt tags. You also need to include a meta description for each page of your e-commerce website, etc.

Keeping your website ADA compliant can be beneficial in many ways.

First, it makes you stand out from the crowd. Remember that not all online businesses are adhering to ADA standards. That means that if you can accommodate then you stand a high chance of making more transactions over those that are yet to meet the standards.

Secondly, meeting the ADA standards improves your website’s overall experience on all browsers on all devices.

Thirdly, it helps to make your information easy to understand by Google and other search engines.

Some accessibility issues are easy to detect and fix while others aren’t.

For instance, meta descriptions could be missing in some pages, or you might have a missing label on your opt-in forms.

These issues could make it hard for anyone using your website to understand your content or taking the actions you want them to.

That’s why it’s recommended to use accessibility checker tools to audit your site to catch these issues easily.

Below are some of the accessibility checkers to check whether your website is ADA compliant or not.

1.    Website Accessibility Evaluation Tool- WAVE

WAVE is one of the popular free website accessibility checkers out there. It is developed by WebAIM alongside other website accessibility checker tools.

WebAIM is an organization that was formed to make web content easy to read and understand by all people including those with disabilities.

The tool is easy to use. You just need to enter your website URL on the WAVE page and the tool will check and display the errors detected as well as warnings so you can make changes accordingly.

The good thing about this website accessibility checker is that it also places icons where it detects errors inside your website.

You can download and install the WAVE browser extensions as well so you can test every page you’re working right away.

You can also use the WAVE API– it’s a paid product that lets you automate accessibility checks so you don’t have to run the checker every time you want to fix errors.

2.    SortSite

SortSite is available as an online and offline web accessibility checker. The tool is superb when it comes to testing your website for SEO, accessibility, HTML and CSS standards, and broken links. You can also test your website accessibility on different browsers with this tool as well.

With this tool, you can test up to 10 pages or purchase their paid version to run a complete accessibility test for your website.

After running the accessibility test, the tool will generate a report with the errors and warnings plus it will indicate those that need to be fixed urgently.

Pages that have errors with the highest level of impact means that they are difficult to access.

The good thing is that the tool generates reports with links to the WCAG and Section 508 so you can know how to adjust your website following proper guidelines.

SortSite is the best tool for users who want to scan their entire website although the error messages in the report may confuse developers.

3.    tota11y

tota11y is a checker that lets you understand accessibility problems visually on a page.

The tool is developed by a team of developers from Khan Academy.

When active, the tool displays a menu at the bottom left corner of your browser. When you run it, it displays errors detected on your website related to images, color contrast, missing form labels, etc.

What’s more, tota11y displays the errors on the page showing you the main cause of each problem and how to fix it.

The tool also shows you how content will be interpreted for screen text readers.

This helps to make sure people using screen readers are also accommodated on your website.

4.    DynoMapper

DynoMapper is a web accessibility checker tool and sitemap generator that lets you audit your content and monitor your keywords regularly.

Once run, the tool displays errors through visual sitemaps.

The good thing about this accessibility checker is that you can use it to do larger scans including password-restricted websites.

DynoMapper is a premium tool though and prices start from $40/mo.

These are the most useful and powerful accessibility checker tools you can use to check your website ADA compliance.

You may also want to check out other inclusive web site monitoring tools, although the ones we have outlined above can help you when getting started with your accessibility test.

It’s important to understand that some of these tools may not catch some accessibility errors. Some can only be identified by your website users. That’s why it’s advisable to check your website’s accessibility both with tools and manually.

Perform a manual audit of your site

You can also check your website accessibility manually.

This involves auditing each page of your website following the WCAG– Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Typically, WCAG forms the larger part of website accessibility guidelines. That means that even if you use automated tools to test your website accessibility, the reports generated will be based on WCAG- you will need to correct the issues detected following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Technically, WCAG aims at making sure your website follows the following principles:

• That your website visitors have the opportunity to perceive your content through other options- video transcripts or audio.
• That your website visitors can navigate and use your site features with ease. For instance, your search bar, main navigation menu, and other features should be accessible to all people that visit your website regardless of their disability status.
• That your website visitors don’t experience difficulties understanding your website content. For instance, you may want to add tutorials and instructions that show people how to use the tools you provide on your website.
• That all your website’s visitors get the same experience when using your site.

Oftentimes it’s advisable to use automated tools alongside manual auditing to make sure every element on your website adheres to the ADA standards.

How to Make Your Website ADA Compliant

You can test an existing website for ADA compliance and fix any accessibility errors and you can build a website with strict adherence to ADA standards from the get-go.

Below are a few ways to make your website ADA compliant.

Add an ADA compliance plugin.

If your website is hosted on the WordPress platform, you’re all set. WordPress contains several ADA compliance plugins such as WP Accessibility Helper and many others that can make your website user-friendly to anyone including people with disabilities.

Just make sure you familiarize yourself with the features of the plugins you intend to install on your WordPress website and the cost before you decide to invest your money on it.

Audit your site

The first thing you want to do to make your website ADA-compliant is to perform an audit. You can use the tools we shared about to run automated audits or do it manually.

Once you have a complete audit report of your website accessibility, you can then work on making your site ADA compliant.

Once you have checked your website for ADA compliance, you can then proceed to the next step…

Work with an ADA agency

The best way to make your website ADA-compliant is to hire an ADA agency. This will help you to know how to make your website ADA compliant so you don’t suffer from lawyers bringing on lawsuits.

Well, of course, you can still work with your in-house website development team but outsourcing the work would save more time for your team so you can concentrate on other matters of your business.

You must make sure you vet agencies properly though.

For instance, if you’re looking to make your e-commerce website to comply with the ADA web development standards then you need to choose an agency that specializes in e-commerce website design.

Final Word

So there you have it. Given the importance of making your website accessible to every person, it’s important to ensure your website is ADA compliant.

It’s both beneficial to your overall website performance and can help boost your SEO and increase sales.

The good thing is that the process isn’t as complicated as you might have thought.

With the right tools and strategies, you can audit your site, find out the issues making your website incompliant with the ADA guidelines then either install an ADA compliance plugin or hire an experienced ADA agency to work on your website accessibility.

It’s that simple.

The post Is My Website ADA Compliant? How to Check (and Fix) This first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Mar 21, 2023 @ 7:10 pm

There is no doubt that web design and search engine optimization (SEO) are two entirely different fields.

The former focuses on the form and function of a website, while the latter is primarily concerned with driving more traffic to it by getting high rankings in search results.

The relationship between web design and SEO, however, is much closer than most people realize. As a matter of fact, web design can actually make or break your SEO.

Much of the impact of web design on SEO hinges on a little something called user experience, which will officially become a Google ranking factor in 2021.

Simply put, good web design provides an optimal user experience, which, in turn, helps your SEO. Terrible web design, on the other hand, will do the exact opposite.

You may need web design improvement services if your site is any of the following:

Difficult To Navigate

One thing people hate the most is when they get lost within a website they’re trying to explore due to dreadful navigation. A cluttered navigation structure doesn’t help. The same goes for the absence of a search bar that actually brings people to the content they want from your site.

To make it easier for your visitors to jump from one page to another within your site, fix your navigation structure. Organize categories clearly and put up clickable navigation elements. And yes, a working search feature will be very much appreciated. You can also do some internal linking if you want.

With smooth navigation, people will stay longer on your site, which should help reduce your bounce rate.

Pages Load Slowly

Several things can affect the speed at which web pages load. From the end of the user, it could be their Internet speed and the browser and device they’re using. From your end, it could be your web hosting or your web design.

If it’s the web hosting that’s slowing your pages down, you might want to consider switching hosting companies. However, if your website is graphics-heavy, has custom fonts, or uses large images, your web design is probably the culprit.

For faster loading speeds, you should consider going easy on the graphics, optimizing your images, and minimizing (or even eliminating) the use of custom fonts.

Remember, visitors will likely leave when a web page takes more than three seconds to load. Your bounce rate will rise, which will hurt your SEO.

Has Poor Visual Design

Web design is a lot of other things, but its primary objective is to make a website look visually stunning in its own way. A website’s appearance is what people immediately notice the moment your superb SEO work leads them to your pages.

However, you cannot expect people to stay long when your site isn’t easy on the eyes.

The color scheme you used may not be right for the site. It’s also possible that the layout is all over the place. Maybe the graphics work is a little too loud for their taste.

When people don’t like something about the way your site looks, they will simply close your page, move on to another site, and leave you with an ever-increasing bounce rate.

Laden With Intrusive Pop Ups

There is no question that a popup ad can be a useful lead generation tool.

However, you stand to annoy visitors when a popup is what greets them as soon as they access your page through that link they found in search results. It’s even worse if your popup is big enough to cover the entire content they’re actually trying to check out.

It’s highly likely that users will be annoyed enough by your site’s popup shenanigans to go somewhere else. Your SEO efforts that drove them to your website in the first place will then be wasted.

There’s nothing wrong with using popups, but it would be better for your SEO if you use them in moderation. Also, avoid using popups as a welcome mat. It’s best to give users a minute or two to have a look around before showing them a popup ad.

Uses Too Many Fonts

There’s a wealth of typefaces out there. You may even design your own. It’s easy to get tempted to use several of your favorites for your website with virtually countless font options.

The problem is, using too many fonts can distract and confuse visitors. Use five or six fonts in one page, and you’re risking annoying users enough to leave.

As much as possible, keep your font use down to a maximum of three, and at three different sizes, too.

Offers Less Than Compelling Content

Let’s say your SEO efforts are bearing fruit, with traffic to your website rising significantly.

However, if your content doesn’t provide what your visitors need, you can expect your bounce rate to increase as well.

It cannot be stated enough how important quality content is for your website. Whether it’s the written or visual kind, you have to make sure that the content you offer answers to their questions, solves their issues, or is generally interesting to them.

Typographical errors, spelling issues, and atrocious grammar also turn visitors off, so make sure that your written content has little to none of these.

Not Mobile-Friendly

It’s been years since mobile Internet use has passed desktop, and it hasn’t looked back.

Strangely enough, many websites are still not mobile-friendly, even as the number of mobile users continues to grow.

If your site is one of them, you’re probably missing out on many things, from increased mobile traffic to potential sales.

When mobile users stumble on your website via search results, and it doesn’t render well on the smartphone or tablet they’re using, don’t expect them to make an effort to zoom in and try to read what you have to offer.

They’ll just move on to a responsive site, probably that of your competitor’s.

Excellent SEO work brings people to your site, and good web design that enhances the user experience helps keep them there. Pay your web design a little more attention, and you stand to reap SEO rewards eventually.

The post Understanding How Web Design Impacts Your SEO first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Sep 30, 2021 @ 9:54 am

Once you get traffic to your website from SEO you may be wondering what is next.

If your website traffic is not converting into clients, leads, sales, etc. then you may need to work on conversion rate optimization.

Your website design is a key contributor to how to increase your conversion rate.

People are visual beings, so it’s only natural that their decisions can be driven by what they see on your site – from colors and fonts to how your content is laid out on the page.

The idea here is to strike the perfect balance between form and function – good design is not just about aesthetics alone, it’s also about understanding user experience.

Here are 11 tips that can help boost your site’s conversion without sacrificing good web design:

Make your Call-to-Action easily distinguishable

The goal of every page on your site is for a visitor to take action by clicking on your CTA.

Content is a supporting element that should serve as a guide to why they should “Add to cart,” “Book an Appointment,” “Get a Free Consultation,” “Sign Up” or whatever your page’s objective is.

The CTA should be treated as one of the most important elements of the site, so make it stand out by placing it inside a container and picking a color that pops, but at the same time complements the background.

Do the squint test and see how conspicuous your CTA is. Take a look at Mailchimp’s home page:

You’ll know immediately which are Call-to-Action buttons, that’s a good design for website conversion.

Implement The Rule of Thirds

You might think The Rule of Thirds is only applicable to photography, but it’s actually one of the core principles in web design.

Use The Rule of Thirds to visually divide a website page into thirds – this will basically leave you with two equally spaced horizontal and vertical lines – a total of nine equal squares.

Now, once you do that, focus your energy on the four middle sections because based on The Rule of Thirds, those are strategic places of interests and where you should place the most important elements of your site – be it the CTA button, the best features of your product or service, or the most impactful image you have.

Check out how Hubspot placed their CTA right on the intersection.

Use Directional Visual Cues

Directional cues are designed to serve as guideposts to what you want your site visitor to focus on.

To improve conversion, place visual aids like arrows to point toward what you consider most important elements of your site such as call-to-action buttons or your site’s lead capture form.

Now, one thing you have to know is that directional cues come in both explicit and implicit types.

Explicit cues are direct to the point like arrows, lines, or human line of sight. Implicit visual cues, on the other hand, are subtle, almost unnoticeable.

This is usually done through the use of negative space and color contrast. Check out how Codify Academy uses a more subtle arrow to direct a user’s attention to both the form and CTA:

Design for optimum speed

It’s no new knowledge that the age of the internet has fueled people’s impatience. In fact, just a 2-second delay has been known to contribute to a 103% increase in bounce rates.

Every second counts, so make sure that you build your business website for optimum speed.

There are a lot of ways to do this – minimizing HTTP requests, minifying and combining files, doing a compression audit, and enabling browser caching are just a few of the things you can do to speed uploading site.

There are a lot of web accessibility resources and tools you can use to evaluate your site’s speed performance such as Google Pagespeed Insights and GTmetrix. These can help identify issues, so you know exactly what and how to troubleshoot.

Utilize your white space effectively

White space or negative space is the section of your site that is not used for any content element. Knowing how to use white space effectively can help your site look less crowded and more organized.

The purpose of white space is to help the user distinguish supporting content from the actionable parts of your site. This will enable you to highlight CTA’s, increase content legibility, and create balance. See how the second image looks cleaner and easier to the eyes?

Consider the F-layout

Based on research, the natural behavior of users when browsing a web page is in an F pattern.

Basically, their first instinct is to look from left to right starting at the top of the screen, and as they go further down the page, they just scan their way through it.

This means that the bottom part of the page gets the least amount of attention, so you want to place the most important message and elements along the F-shape lines. Here’s a quick wireframe to guide you:

Tell a story through visual hierarchy

Just like with the F-pattern, a clear visual hierarchy is based on how a user takes in information when they visit your site.

It serves as another guide to their thought patterns by placing elements that naturally flow – telling a story before encouraging them to take action by clicking a CTA.

It’s how content is positioned inside a page which often starts with a hero headline, a supporting content that is a mix of text and image, then a CTA.

Remember, every page of your website should tell a tale because people are all about brand stories now, not hard-sell statements.

See the image below and you’ll be able to see the difference in a visual hierarchy – this small change led to an online sale increase of 35.6%.

Leverage the Power of Color

There’s more to colors than your site’s aesthetics. Color psychology plays a big role in terms of conveying a message – it affects how your brand is perceived not just online, but offline as well.

It’s important to remember that certain color combinations can evoke different emotions, so make sure every color is well-thought-out and should reflect the message of your brand clearly.

One way to play around and come up with the right colors is to curate a Pinterest board with images that seem aligned with your brand vision.

Once done, you can upload those to Adobe’s Color Wheel which will automatically provide a color scheme based on the photo set you uploaded.

This will help you pick our colors you can use for elements like background and text, so they will all look complementary and easy to the eyes.

Encourage Familiarity with Faces

People connect with people and this is mainly the reason why you should use photos rather than vector images.

It has been proven that sites that use people on their visual content tend to boost conversions as users feel more connected and understood.

However, do try and steer away from stock photos if you can because consumers are more inclined to trust brands that are authentic and personal.

Look at how Airbnb deliberately uses people on the Experiences part of the site– it allows users to imagine themselves in that place.

Follow the 8-second rule

Did you know that the human attention span is even shorter than that of a goldfish?

With only 6 to 8 seconds to capture and engage with your market, it is pivotal to make those seconds count the moment they land on your site. Here are some things you can do to grab their attention on the first 8 seconds:

• Your hero image should be eye-catching and partnered with a headline that is benefit-driven.
• Your CTA buttons should be distinguishable, clear, and direct-to-the-point.
• Your content should be concise, so use power words to make it more engaging.

Abide by Hick’s law

Hick’s Law is named after Willam Edmund Hick, a British Psychologist. According to him, the more choices you provide a person, the longer it will take for them to decide.

This is a popular theory in web design, that’s why more and more businesses are limiting the contents of their navigation bar. See how Intercom is able to categorize what they do in three options.

This makes it easier for the consumer to find a specific solution to their specific problem, therefore minimizing friction that could lead them to exit your site.

Always K.I.S.S.

K.I.S.S. is a popular acronym for the mantra “Keep it simple, stupid” and is widely considered as one of the most popular principles of web design.

Just like the Hick’s Law, simplicity is key to driving conversions. The more information you cram on a page, the more confusing it gets for the consumer.

Simple is not only direct-to-the-point but also visually more appealing.

It’s important to note that a user can only handle so much information at a single time, so when it comes to user experience, keeping it simple is key to not make them overwhelmed.

See how Apple keeps it minimal:

Final words

While all these 11 web design principles are great for improving your site’s conversion rate, it’s also imperative to know that design evolves together with user experience.

The key to guaranteeing conversion is really in understanding how your market perceives your brand and the information you convey through your site.

As long as you continuously serve your market’s needs, then everything else will follow.

The post 11 Web Design Principles That Will Boost Your Conversion Rate first appeared on SEO Optimizers.