Functionality is one of the most important things when you build a website. There are many ways poor functionality can affect your site. Poor functionality occurs in many ways and includes issues like broken links, too much depth, maneuverability, and much more.

Broken links can cause serious problems with a site. They often occur when people house their own website and work out of the folder housing the web files. The biggest problems occur when multiple people have access to the same system and clean up folders and directories by moving them around and make changes to folder names or even delete things. This causes the web files to be pointed to a location that no longer exists. For example, if you have a photo of an artificial Christmas tree on your site and the folder is no longer in the same location or the picture has been deleted then the picture will not show up on the web page. When links direct users to photos and files this is the most common cause. Broken links make it impossible for customers to purchase artificial Christmas trees if they want to if the links to the shopping cart do not work.

Websites cannot be too deep, meaning they should only go three pages deep from the home page. Many online companies fail because the most important pages on their site are 5 and 6 pages deep. Search engines won’t index pages that are deeper than 3 pages. This means that the most important pages will not be displayed in the search engine results. Always think lateral and not vertical when building your website. This way, the page with your most attractive artificial Christmas tree will be displayed in the search engine results.

Maneuverability is often another problem for online businesses. It is common for sites to be difficult to click around and have a clear understanding of where you are. Users need to have the ability to identify their location on the site at all times. If they want to get back to the home page then it should be one click away. When users get lost on sites they will just go elsewhere for their business. Building a website that is easy to maneuver around is very important. You can do this by having people click through your site to verify that it is very easy to use.

There are many elements to proper web design. Functionality is very important in order for a site to be successful on the Internet today. Thousands of companies online fail each year due to poor functionality problems. Ways to ensure you have proper functionality includes making sure all of your links work properly, build lateral, make your site easy to use and more. The best way to avoid problems with broken links and files going missing is to house your website files on a hosting server that no one has access to. Functionality can drive traffic away from your site and cause a company to lose revenues.

Article source: http://www.htaccessibility.com/blog/
ways-poor-functionality-can-affect-your-online-business/