User experience on websites has never been more important. Not only are most businesses now based online, but many companies do all of their trading and offer all of their services exclusively online. This makes your website as important as a shop front when it comes to what users think of you and your company.
Entering a website where the navigation is hard to use, the loading is slow, and it’s hard to find what you want can make even the most eager customer click off your website and go straight to your competitor; thus, mastering UX should be a priority for every single business that has a website. However, while many think that UX just consists of how a website looks and how easy it is to get around a website, which it is, often the smaller parts of UX are make-or-break for many websites. This can be the checkout process or ensuring that your website is suitable for mobile. Often these smaller aspects of website design make the biggest difference and can be the difference between a sale and an enquiry.
Overall, user experience is an essential part of running a modern business. However, mastering it can transform not only your users’ experience on your website but also increase consumer conversions, which can overall benefit your business as a whole.
So, if you want to master your UX, here is a comprehensive guide to how you can improve the UX on your website so you can start seeing results.
1. Optimise your mobile-first design
The majority of your website traffic will likely come from smartphones; depending on your industry, it will never be more important to make sure that your website is accessible from smartphones. Many businesses, including huge ones, only make their websites for desktop, and this can mean that the majority of their customer base cannot access their products or services whilst on the go. Not only can this lead to poor sales, but it can also make a company look unprofessional and lower their reputation.
There’s another side to ensuring that your website is designed with a mobile-first mindset, and this relates to website SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and is where you optimise your website to appear higher on the results page when someone searches for a product or service. When a website is not designed for mobile, Google can sense this and will place your website lower down the search page, meaning there’s less chance of customers clicking on it. This can lead to lower engagement overall, leading to lower sales for a company.
2. Prioritise speed and performance
Slow page loading not only can decrease user satisfaction but can also lead to many users leaving the site and using another site for your product or service. We’ve all tried to click on a website before, but after a few seconds of it not loading, we thought that the website was down or just got bored of waiting and used another instead. This is a common occurrence for many websites and could be happening with your business’s website. Not only can this lead to higher bounce rates and lower engagement, but it can also further affect SEO as previously mentioned above. When the speed of a website is low, it can push your website down the search results page, which means that fewer people see it, and you receive even less engagement. For a business, both of these things can be detrimental to product and service sales, which is why you should optimise your website speed.
3. Build clear visual hierarchy
When a user lands on a page, they should know exactly what you offer and where to go to find this within a few seconds. This involves ensuring a few things, including using white space effectively as well as creating clear and bold calls to action. This is especially needed on websites such as personal injury solicitors websites where people must know how they can enquire.
- The use of white space: white space is not what most people think. Many people think that white space is a bad thing and must be filled with information and photos; however, it’s quite the opposite. White space is not useless but helps to tell the eye where to look when a user is on a website by separating paragraphs. When this space is not here, it prevents users from easily finding what they need quickly, as it is too convoluted to see.
- Create bold CTAs: As soon as you land on a website, it should be clear of 3 things: what you do, where to buy products and how to locate or contact the business. These are necessary things that should stand out in colour and should be accessible by phone and desktop alike.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, investing in user experience is one of the most effective ways to grow your business. You can prioritise mobile responsiveness, site speed and clear visual design, so you can create a seamless journey that builds trust with your visitors.