Helping your users save time

Users have less patience to navigate on your site or application and have no time to waste thinking about what should be done on your site or app. A good design should be simple and intuitive. It is important to make navigation paths easy to let the user complete the tasks (such as complete a purchase). A well-organized site's information architecture can be crucial with appropriate prioritization and hierarchies (we will talk more about this in Chapter 8, Reorganizing IA for Better Navigation), with clear global navigation and navigation hints such as the well-known Breadcrumbs that outlines the user path on the website or app.

One way to help users to save time, for example, is to automate form fields. Each form field can be an opportunity to acquire your user information; if the form is too long or complex, you may end up losing a client. Some of the easiest places you can do this are the addresses (cities and states), which can be filled automatically by the system. Even though this might sound small, those five seconds you save for your user can make a difference to a conversion.

If you have an option in the form to fill the zip code, leave it above the address, so when filling in the zip code, the city and state fields can be filled automatically.

As soon as those fields are filled, the cursor can go to the next field automatically and auto-complete can also help your user to save time when filling out form fields or searches. Another tip is let the information be saved to optimize the user time when returning to your site. Also, keep in mind that shorter forms convert better than longer forms.

To avoid possible user errors, feedback should always be provided. For example: your city and states will be filled in automatically, or the fill will be so fast that the user does not have to wait. The cursor should also go directly to the next field by jumping what has already been populated automatically by the system.

It is also important to ensure that your user has easy access to the support contact or chat in case of help needed. In this way, the user will feel more comfortable knowing that they can ask for help if necessary.