5 June 2007

Firms that focus on making web addresses user-friendly could significantly boost usability and visitor numbers, according to one expert.

Writing for ZDNetAsia, Tony Patton states that using URLs which are easy to understand can help users to remember addresses and paste them into emails, allowing the URL to be shared more easily.

They can also help website visitors get to a certain section by adding a relevant word to the URL - one example being the Google News website, which has the URL www.google.com/news, which is simply the address for the Google homepage with /news added to the end.

Other considerations to take into account include whether the URL is easy to type, particularly on mobile devices, and whether it is short enough to be clearly presented in literature such as company brochures, Mr Patton says.

"As a gateway to everything on the web, URLs form an important part of the user experience," he comments.

A recent poll conducted for domain name leasing firm LeaseThis.com found that nearly two-thirds of Internet users forgo the use of search engines to find web addresses by typing keywords directly into their browsers to find specific URLs.

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