Everything You Need To Know About Website Accessibility
Are you thinking about building your own website? You might be considering this to finally set up that business that you’ve been kicking around in your head. Or, perhaps you are ready to start blogging. You might even just be thinking about doing this as an outlet and a way to share your passion. There are millions of sites online so you have a lot of competition, but that’s okay. You just need to be prepared for some of the challenges. One of the issues that you are always going to face is figuring out a way to reach the largest audience possible.
That’s what we’re going to look at on this article. To do this, you need to make sure that your business website is as accessible as possible to the widest group of people. You need to approach this on a few different levels so let’s dive right in and make sure you understand some of the boxes that you need to hit here.
Diversity
First, do make sure that you are thinking in terms of diversity. If you’re planning on using the website as part of a business then this is particularly crucial for one key reason. Diversity makes businesses more profitable and more successful. One survey has revealed that diverse businesses are about forty percent more likely to succeed on the market compared with other companies. That’s a pretty important stat to keep in mind when you also discover that ninety percent of new startups will fail in their first year. So, you need to think about how to ensure that your website does attract a diverse range of people.
There are simple ways to do this. Are you adding images and videos to your website? If so, make sure that this type of media does show a diverse range of different people. You should use images of individuals who are different gender, race, cultures and ages too. Ultimately, by doing this, you will be sending the fantastic message that your business is for everyone. If you build a website with pictures of twenty-something women, then that’s who people are going to think your website is for. Now, maybe that’s what you want. Perhaps you have decided that this is your target audience and it can be part of building a brand image or profile. But if you want to go further than this with your business and if you want to attract the largest audience possible, it’s time to lean in a different direction.
You should also think about the language that you use as well. Believe it or not, language can suggest that you are aiming for a particular audience. If you are too formal, it suggests that you are looking for business owners and professional leads. That’s great if you’re running a B2B company, but it’s not ideal if you are trying to build a blog that is going to be for everyone and all different types of people. Instead, you need to aim for language that is more informal and casual while still potentially having a certain air of authority.
Accessibility For Different Individuals
Did you know when you run a website, you have a responsibility to ensure that it is accessible to everyone. Ultimately, this means that someone who has reading difficulties or who might be deaf should still be able to use your website and access the information. So, how do you ensure that you are helping everyone be able to understand and access your website?
Well, you can explore readability scores. There are several different readability scores and each one provides different information about the content of your site. Automated software allows you to check the readability score of your content. It will then provide information on who will be able to understand the content. This is usually an age group or a school year group. For instance, it might say that only college students can understand it. Most websites will aim for readability score which means that ten-year-olds can read it easily.
Now it’s worth pointing out this doesn’t mean the content is aimed at ten-year-olds. It just means that this is the lowest age group that would be able to understand and thus access the information. A lot of businesses will aim for this level of readability score because they want to make sure that everyone can understand and access their products or services. Blogs should be the same because again, you want to appeal to the widest audience.
So, how do you get the right readability score? Well, aim for short sentences rather than sweeping ones with multiple commas. Choose small words and don’t be pretentious with your writing. Proving you are intelligent is only useful if you’re appealing to someone where that matters. For instance, if you’re running an essay writing business, by all means, use all the big words you want. But for a blog? That will alienate some readers. Keep it simple and you’ll be amazed at the impact it will have.
Think about font too. It’s important to make sure that your site is laid out in a way so people can easily, clearly read the information. Choose your font and colours to reflect this idea. In other words, you don’t want to be in a situation where the words blend into the background. You’ll get a high bounce rate if this is the case because users won’t be able to get the information that they want or need to decide whether they should buy from you. Or, sign up as a regular reader of the content that you provide.
Furthermore, you should be adapting your content to make sure that it is accessible to as many people as possible. You might, for instance, want to provide an audio description. If you do have a video or audio file running on your website, it’s important that people who can’t hear can still get the information. This is the best way to do this and ensure that you aren’t losing those who probably would have been interested in your website if they had been able to access the info. You might even consider using a service like this to provide the same information in different languages. Even if you’re not appealing to an international audience, there’s probably a lot of people in your local area who don’t speak English as their first language.
Technical Issues
Finally, let’s consider some of the technical issues that can mean that your website isn’t as accessible as it should be for a large audience. There are a few issues that you need to be aware of here and one would be slow load times. If your website isn’t loading in seconds, congratulations, you’ve already lost the interest of your online audience. That’s true for blogs and business websites.
The common culprit of a slow load time will usually be too much data on pages. This doesn’t mean that you should cut down the number of images and videos. Instead, you should compress the files and you can do this without losing the quality and making your website seems like a pretty poor product. There are plenty of different software options online that will allow you to do this the right way.
Another issue that could be causing the problem is hosting. A lot of website owners, particularly new owners will avoid hosting their site. Instead, they will piggyback off another service which is fine. But, it will slow your site down and mean that you’ll struggle to stay on the same level as your competition.
If it’s not a problem with the load time, then it’s possible that you have an issue with the structure of your website. You should follow the three click rule here. Basically, this means that a user should never be more than three clicks from what they are looking for on your website. If you do this, then you can simplify the process for them and ensure that they don’t get lost. This also reduces the marketing funnel which is a smart move because it could ultimately lead to a higher conversion rate. If your site is set up it can be complicated to fix the structure and you’ll usually need professional help. Ideally, you want to get this right at the beginning so you don’t have to try and correct the issue later on.
Or, it could just be an issue with SEO. One of the easiest ways to fail with accessibility is to simply not let users find your site. That’s all about optimization and whether you handle this the right way. Ultimately, it’s easy to make mistakes here from keyword stuffing to incorrect link building. It’s always advised that you use a professional SEO solution, particularly if you are trying to make your website profitable.
We hope this helps you understand the importance of accessibility when building a website and how to achieve it with your own business or blog.
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