Member Article

PayPal streamlines its web design. Should you?

This month PayPal, one of the biggest global players in ecommerce, announced that it was unveiling a revamped design for its US website over the coming weeks, with international users due to see the changes ?later?.

So what newfangled ideas and features have they added in to impress their customers? Surprisingly few, actually. In fact, they?ve removed lots of stuff.

Focusing on users needs

?We believe the best technology is the kind that helps customers achieve their goals without getting in the way,? said Vikas Bhatia, PayPal?s senior director of online marketing. Writing on the company?s official blog (https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/06/paypal-com-gets-a-makeover-2/), he emphasised that the philosophy behind the redesign was very much one of streamlined simplicity.

?We found there were literally thousands of pages that were simply not useful to our consumers any longer. With this new look and feel we?ve dramatically cut down the number of pages offered,? said Bhatia.

He says that after extensive research, they found that most users wanted to be able to do exactly what they wanted to do quickly and without hassle. ?Our old site focused more on the products and less on the way that our customers wanted to use our products? we have reworked the overall navigation of the site to ensure users can get to what they want quickly,? wrote Bhatia.

Doing more with less

So if one of the world?s most used websites (PayPal is currently ranked as the 36th most important website in the world by Alexa) can find room for improvement, can you?

Having too much clutter on a website and unclear navigation are two of the most common problems with websites. If you feel that your site may be guilty of either of these then it?s important to take steps to remedy the matter. Doing so can greatly increase the overall usability of your website, ensuring that people stay longer and are more likely to return.

A few quick ideas for streamlining your web design:

• Identify pages which offer little value to users, then either prune or remove. Be brutal.
• Check that all your navigation buttons and links do exactly what they say on the tin, and that?s it?s easy for users to carry out specific actions.
• Don?t let style get in the way of function ? If something looks cool but adds little benefit to the overall functionality of your site consider getting rid of it.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jon Celeste .