Influence of Icons on User Experiences

Interface provides communication between the system and the user, and help the users to reach their objectives. A website user interface is a means to an objective, and the website designer task is to create an interface to help the user to reach the objective.

Icons are perfect way to express the meaning. Users can learn easily how the interface works just by interacting with these icons. This article is mentioned how icons can improve the quality of user experiences on a website.

Improve Navigation

Icons naturally help users navigate through a website based on visuals alone. The best icons are the ones that most people recognize so you always want to stick. For example, the Facebook icon is known to all the user and helps to navigate users better. Just remember that include text label for the links. Pure icons for navigation rarely works, or at least it’s not the best case for usability. Icons truly improve the user experience. Moreover, icons make website discovering much simpler and helps simplify purposes.

Icons Encourage Behavior

For example, most web browsers have back buttons and forward buttons. The back button points to the left and forward points to the right, and these buttons let users navigate in their browser history. So any right-facing arrow typically implies moving forward onto the next page.

Icons can be used in Form Descriptions

Each website has different type of form whether it is an e-mail signup form, an account login form, or even just a basic contact form. For example email sign up form usually shown as a small envelop icon. Also, icons can be used to explain content, because icons and visualizations are easier to understand than words.
Moreover, icons help the user to recognize what each form field is asking for. For example inside a contact form, each field symbolize by an icon, due to the labels are nested inside the form, and the labels will disappear when you fill the field. This can cause user confusion after user enters some data and forget what that the field is for. It is recommended to add icons in the form, if you have more than 4 fields in your form.

Icons Represent Features and Pointers

All new business, web apps, applications have a series of features and reasons to get people on the site. But they also clarify features and help readers quickly skim the homepage. But they can help clarify what the platform does and why it’s useful.