Remember You Are Not the User

One thing people can do to make their websites better is to remember that you are not representative of all your users. Our life experiences and how we interact with the web are not indicative of how everyone interacts with the web.

We must care about accessibility.

Some users rely on assistive technology to navigate web pages. 

We must care about multi-language support.

Layouts that make sense to me, as a native English speaker (a left-to-right language) don’t necessarily make sense in Arabic (a right-to-left language) and can’t simply be swapped from a content perspective.

We must care about common/familiar UX paradigms.

What may be obvious to you may not be obvious to other users.

Take the time to research your key user markets and understand how these users expect your website or product to function. Don’t forget accessibility. Don’t forget internationalization. And don’t forget that you are not the representation of all users.