Website user experience matters – don’t let anybody tell you otherwise!
What can we learn about UX design from ninjas? When both are at their peak, you can’t tell they’re there. Perhaps, the User Experience of a customer is the most effective aspect at your fingertips on your website.
It acts as a sales representative around the clock and has the potential to be your most valuable asset and the focus of your advertising campaigns. A customer’s opinion of a company is affected by several aspects, including its website and mobile app quality. Make sure your webpage or mobile app has a positive User Experience. It can benefit your company in more areas than you might think. And your website’s user interface (UX) is a huge deal, despite what you would assume.
Website user experience: what does it really mean?
The goal of improving the user experience is to have happier visitors, and it can be done by making a website more user- and barrier-friendly.
One of UX’s primary functions is to provide a pleasurable experience for site visitors by simplifying and enhancing the site’s navigation. The ‘State of UX in the Enterprise 2019 Report’ found that 70% of CEOs consider UX design a differentiating factor in the market.
Although a well-executed user experience (UX) can go undetected, its opposite, an awful one, is never forgotten and never forgiven. Because of the negative user experience, search engines will rank your site poorly.
Furthermore, every website owner has to step up their game since the internet age relies heavily on visual search. In the span of a single second, visitors might form an opinion on your site’s attractiveness.
Our professionals can help you develop a website and improve it for your B2B company if you aren’t sure what is needed.
Here are some features that a well-designed website must have:
- Mobile compatibility and fast load times
- The website should be well-designed with an easy-to-use interface
- Your website must have a well-organized information architecture
- Your website should be easy to navigate for all the users
- You can enhance the user experience by providing your customers with high-quality content
- Must also tell them about yourself and your background story
- Your content should be optimized for search engines and social web
- Also, make sure that your content is always readily accessible to your target audience
Understand what UX designers do that goes beyond the user interface design
Nearly 94% of customers are put off by poorly designed websites.
Common synonyms for “User Experience Design” include “User Interface Design” and “Usability.” Accessibility and user interface (UI) architecture are crucial to UX design, but they are just a small part of the bigger picture. UX design typically overlaps with and draws from many other disciplines.
The identity, design, usability, and functionality of a product are just a few of the many things a UX designer thinks about. It begins long before the consumer even gets their hands on the goods.
In this way, the design of a product’s user experience (such as Apple’s iPhone) takes into account the item’s usage and the buying, owning, and fixing of the device.
Similarly, UX designers care about more than just making useful things; they care about the whole user experience, including how enjoyable, useful, and entertaining it is.
That’s why there isn’t a set definition of what constitutes a positive user experience. As an alternative, a positive user experience corresponds to one that caters to the individual requirements of each user in the context in which that user would be interacting with the product.
If you are still unsure, know that 90% of your audience will start scrolling down within the first 14 seconds. That’s how much people are in a hurry. Therefore, optimize your website’s user experience now!
Now onto the main fish: 7 ways to optimize the user experience of your website
Way 1: Card sorting will help you discover user mental models
Card sorting is a user experience study technique to learn about people’s information processing and classification styles.
Card sorts, often known as “card sorting studies,” have participants organize a deck of cards into logical groups. Physical cards, sheets of parchment, or a web-based card sorting program can all be used to carry out the exercise.
UX Card sorting is an effective research technique with many applications.
Among the most popular use of card sort data by academics and designers are:
- Make a user-friendly homepage or website by designing a straightforward information architecture (IA).
- Find out how others interpret and feel about certain ideas and concepts.
- Learn to anticipate the locations where your users will be looking for specific information.
- Discover new ways to classify your material or thoughts.
Way 2: Use whitespaces in your design
Even while increasing the amount of white space on your site is a relatively minor design change, it can significantly influence making your content more accessible and readable.
Human Factors International found that including white space on a website helped draw attention to key features like CTA buttons. There is a 20% jump in understanding for site visitors.
Increasing the amount of white space on your website gives the user interface much-needed breathing room, which makes the website’s exploration more pleasant.
Empty white space helps a website appear more polished and professional, not to mention more pleasing to the eye.
White space draws the viewer’s eye to the content you want them to see. Look at what happened to Apple’s website following the introduction of the iPhone X.
Way 3: Don’t forget the importance of quality content for your users
Use cutting-edge strategies to provide material that is both interesting and original. This is the foundation of your online identity and the key to setting your business from competitors.
Add interesting media like videos to your marketing strategy. The most successful visual material is video, which is proven to enhance conversion by 80%. As your primary online presence, your website should serve as more than simply an online shop.
Content on your site that is optimized for search engines should be written with the user’s goals and interests in mind. Always put the user’s needs first since the content will become king when it does its job well.
Way 4: Ensure the backlinks on your website are valid
Visitors will leave your site quickly if they encounter any broken links. Moreover, they can cause a drop in search engine ranks.
Prevent this by routinely checking your site’s links to verify they are all active and leading to the correct pages. We can verify the functionality of each link individually. Although this method might be time-consuming, it is the surest approach to guarantee that everything operates as intended. In addition, we can utilize Google Webmaster Tools or Ahrefs to find any broken links.
Way 5: Minimize pop-Ups whenever possible
Those “before you leave” exit-intent pop-ups are annoying, and if you’re anything like me, you try to avoid them at all costs.
It can take you a few clicks through a couple of pop-ups to get to the content on certain sites. In a nutshell, this strategy is a complete disaster for end users.
They help with CRO to some degree, but accessibility is not perfect. Metrics like your site’s bounce rate and average time spent with pop-ups might severely impact there.
We think they’ll become obsolete in the next several years as public opinion shifts against them. We believe in your ability to devise novel methods to convey your call to action.
Way 6: Offer good click-through rates
Also tracked by Google is the click-to-print ratio, which compares the number of times users click on a website to the number of times it is printed in search results.
This is a positive sign if the users are familiar with and like using the website. Also, read about the evolution of digital marketing in recent times.
Way 7: Improve the website’s loading speed
You likely already know that Google considers website load speed when determining search engine rankings.
A visitor’s impression of a website improves if he has to wait less time to access its information. Hence this factor is crucial.
Way 8: Perfect your website’s technical SEO
While it cannot appear to be a user-focused effort to work on technical SEO, three web vitals (opening speed, reactivity, and aesthetic consistency) significantly impact the user experience.
Image optimization, browser caching, and eliminating unnecessary bulk all help speed up these crucial website metrics.
Tim Parker, director of marketing at IT solutions and consulting company Syntax Integration, adds that “technical SEO makes it simpler for search results to locate your information,” which would, in turn, simplifies the process for individuals to discover your content.
Way 9: Make a mobile-friendly and responsive website
These days, mobile devices account for more than half of all internet traffic. So, if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you should expect a whopping five times as many people to click the back button.
Consequently, if you don’t make your website mobile-friendly, you miss out on a massive audience. Not only should you keep your customers in mind, but also search engines.
Google indexes your desktop and smartphone versions of your content separately. That’s why ensuring your site is optimized for mobile users in search engines is important.
Way 10: Last but not least, make attractive headlines!
There is a direct correlation between using relevant keywords in your content and increased traffic. Include enticing headlines to get people excited.
Headings have a higher ranking with search engines than the rest of the material on a page, so ensuring you have a compelling title that stands out can greatly enhance your site’s usability, exposure, click-through rate, and conversions.
Make your user experience better with these ways.
The user experience of your website can be improved by adding individual pieces, but a superb online experience can only be produced by strategically mixing such aspects.
Be careful to address the fundamental tenets of user experience design as you work to improve the user experience of your website.
The success of your website’s user experience (UX) will be directly proportional to your website’s effectiveness in meeting your customers’ requirements. Improve your website’s user experience with the help of Vigilante Marketing!
Writer’s Bio
Tayyab is a diction enthusiast and an SEO buff with a CS background. He’s been serving the SAAS & PAAS world for the last five years. Let’s connect on LinkedIn.