Are customers struggling to use and navigate your website?
A positive user experience (UX) is essential. If people feel frustrated while using your website, they might leave.
If people leave without clicking around, it could impact your search engine ranking. A low search ranking can make it more difficult for you to reach customers. Meanwhile, almost 90% of online shoppers won’t return to a website after a bad user experience.
In fact, 70% of online stories fail because of bad usability. Customers will judge you for it, too. People form 75% of their judgment about your credibility based on aesthetics.
By establishing user experience goals, you can keep users happy and clicking through your site. Your search ranking will improve, which can help you reach more customers.
Not sure where to start? Here are the eight tips you need when learning how to improve user experience on company websites. Give your business a boost online with these tips today.
1. Brand Consistency
Before learning how to improve your website with user experience in mind, take a look at your pages. Is the design consistent? Are you using elements from your brand?
Your brand can communicate your company’s underlying message. What type of mood do you want to set? How do you want people to feel when they look at your website?
If your design is inconsistent, you could risk confusing visitors. They might think they landed on a different website between one page and the next.
They could leave, costing you sales.
In fact, consistent visual branding, customer experience, and storytelling can boost revenues by up to 23%. Consider creating brand guidelines for your business. Brand guidelines will ensure your entire team is on the same page regarding your brand.
Your brand can include your:
- Logo
- Color palettes
- Fonts
- Imagery/photography styles
- Voice
- Tone
- Personality
Maintaining a consistent brand can help brand awareness and recognition grow. Meanwhile, almost 60% of consumers prefer to choose familiar brands. Drawing on their familiarity can help you retain customers.
A 2% increase in customer retention can lower costs by as much as 10%.
Make sure elements on each page remain consistent, including your fonts, button styles, and color scheme.
2. Clean and Easy Navigation
Is your navigation organized and easy to understand? If not, visitors might struggle to find the information they need. As you set your user experience goals, keep the end-user in mind.
What are their goals? What are they looking for?
An organized navigation bar can encourage them to explore your content. It can also direct users toward a conversion.
Consider adding a call-to-action (CTA) button at the top right of your navigation. Make sure this button stands out with an eye-catching color. You can use this button to direct users toward a form or your e-commerce store.
Make sure each drop-down menu on your navigation is intuitive. If a page doesn’t have a purpose, remove it from the navigation.
3. Quick Load Times
Consumers want fast, easy access to the information they need. If your website loads slowly, they could leave without clicking around. Your bounce rate will increase as a result.
A high bounce rate will hurt your search engine ranking, potentially costing you customers.
Instead, speed your pages up! Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to learn more about what’s causing your site to lag. For example, you might need to compress your images.
Old plugins can cause lag times to increase, too.
Make sure to consider your mobile website’s load times, too. More people are using their smartphones to find information online. If your mobile website is slow, you might lose customers.
4. Safe and Secure
Customers don’t want to give their private information to an insecure website. Look at your URL. Is there a lock in front of the domain name?
Do you see “HTTPS” at the front of the URL?
If not, your website needs an SSL certificate. A secure website can give your customers peace of mind.
Improving your website with digital experience optimization can help keep your visitors happy. You can understand the term further here.
5. Optimized for Mobile
Remember, more people are searching from their smartphones. If your website isn’t optimized, you could fail to achieve the rest of your user experience goals.
Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to confirm your site is optimized. If it’s not, work with a web designer to improve your mobile website user experience. Make sure your site is easy to navigate from smaller screens.
6. Set for Search
Search engine optimization (SEO) can help users find your website on search engines like Google. When they search for a keyword that’s relevant to your business, your website could appear. Optimizing your website for search can make it easier for users to navigate your content.
In addition to optimizing with SEO in mind, consider adding a search function to your website.
The ability to search through your content will make it easier for users to find what they need.
7. Easy to Use
As you learn how to improve your website with user experience design, explore your own pages. Are they easy to use? Do all the links work?
First, consider adding white space to your pages. White space can give your content room to breathe.
Make sure your hyperlinks stand out on the page. You can use contrasting colors to help your links stand out. When links are easy to find, people are more likely to click on them.
Remove any broken links from your site. Broken links could confuse or frustrate users.
These improvements can help improve your website user experience.
8. Made for Skimming
Many people skim through long paragraphs to find the information they need. You can learn how to improve your website by optimizing your content for skimming.
First, organize your content into headers and subheaders. Instead of large blocks of text, use shorter paragraphs. Shorten your sentences as well.
You can also use lists and bullet points to make your content easier to skim.
Achieve Your User Experience Goals: 8 Tips for a Well-Designed Website
Don’t force visitors to dig through your content. Instead, make a list of user experience goals and start improving your website. With these tips, you can keep visitors on your site before directing them to convert.
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