Designing Websites For The Golden Generation
Should you take the golden generation into consideration when you are designing a website? The short answer here is of course you should and in actual fact it is now essential that you think about the age range of people that could view your site when it is being designed. Studies have shown that the part of the market in the United States of people over the age of 55 using the Internet is now roughly equal in size to the number of people that own an iPhone. Now, do you feel that your website can ignore them?
The problem here is that people are often guilty of thinking about producing a website that is spectacular on the eye and full of seriously cool things and with social media icons plastered all over. However, even although this may very well look nice from a design point of view, we need to think about the practical aspect of a website when taking into consideration this golden generation.
A Simple Layout Is King
First, the layout. There is no doubt that a nice, clean, simply layout is the best option. It is important that you get your message across, but never overfill the homepage in particular because too much info from the outset is not going to do you any favors. Instead, break it up into useful sections on various pages and you will get a far better response.
Think About Fonts
You need to remember that, as we get older, our eyesight tends to not be as good as it used to be. What this means from a design perspective is that those crazy fonts could lead to problems for you. Keep it clean, although remember clean does not have to mean boring, and avoid using too many small font sizes either or you will find that people will feel that there is no point in them staying on your site.
Make Buttons And Links Bigger
Due to both eyesight and a reduction in what is known as motor control, which is a fancy way of talking about your ability to co-ordinate between your eyesight and hand movements. From a design perspective it means that you should increase the size of the buttons and links on your site just to make life that bit easier.
Keep Forms And Signups Simple
If you require people to sign up for an account for your site, say for example if you have an ecommerce website, then keep the form as simple as possible. Too many boxes and options can just be confusing and this is something that has to be avoided. Make life easy by limiting the information that you require or at least offer an easy to understand explanation of the details you want and the reasons behind it. A long form may look impressive, but is there any point to it if people are unable to complete it?
Make Contacting You Clearer
People need to know how to contact you, but it should also not be hidden away in a corner. Make the different contact options as clear as possible so that it cannot be missed as you will tend to find that people with less confidence in using the Internet will indeed have more questions. If they struggle to see how they can get answers to them, then it will lead to them clicking off and moving elsewhere instead.
Remember The Experience With Technology
However, even when you take everything above into consideration it is still vitally important that you remember their experience with technology. This becomes even more important when you push the age further and discover that more people over the age of 70 are now using the Internet and this entire idea of talking to people around the world in an instant is completely new and baffling.
Never assume that everybody that is viewing your website is an absolute expert with technology as that is not the case. Instead, it is best to always think of them as having the same limited knowledge and design your website around that.
Your designer will be able to advise you on the best course of action to take with your site because there is of course an understanding that some sites are promoting services, products, or ideas that are specifically aimed at the younger generation. This does mean that the advice above does not always apply, but at least knowing that there is a problem is a good step forward.
Only thinking about the younger generation is a major error on your part and even though it is impossible to predict how much revenue you are missing out on the mere fact that you are allowing any part of your market to pass you by is a real mistake. It only requires slight changes to what you are doing now, but those changes are important, so contact your web designer and ask their advice because exclusion is a bad thing unless it is for specific reasons of course.
