Last updated on February 1st, 2024
Users’ experience of a website while navigating through its pages to access information systematically and buying products, etc., can make or break a brand’s prospects. A website with complex navigation, chaotic images, and no visual hierarchy will compel users to leave it quickly. Therefore, your website must be user-friendly so that its target audience spends more time on it and visits repeatedly.
Many business owners wrongly think a visually appealing website is good enough to keep visitors glued. But a visually pleasing website must also be a pleasant experience when visitors explore its different pages. Remember that a hallmark of a user-friendly website is that it makes visitors’ buying journey memorable.
But before setting out to create a website for users, first know what exactly user experience is all about.
What Is User Experience?
User experience (UX) refers to a user’s opinions, thoughts, and emotions about a particular application, website, or system. Users form these impressions on how a website or other application feels, looks, and how much easier it is to use.
As a website owner, you must reduce possible friction between your target audience and your website. For example, customers do not forget and forgive a bad UX, leading to the search engine lowering your website’s overall ranking.
One of the best ways to maintain your website is by working closely with UX designers. Considering their experience in the industry, they know how to configure your page and make essential information easy to find.
UX Designers Follow The Seven Fundamental Principles of User Experience Design:
- Usability: This aims to ensure your website is intuitive and easy to use.
- Credibility: Your content, identity, and brand should be trustworthy.
- Usefulness: Your website should assist users in satisfying their needs or goals.
- Desirability: Your site should elicit an emotional reaction from your target audience.
- Findability: It should be easy to navigate your website to find helpful content.
- Accessibility: This means making your website user-friendly to everyone, including persons with disabilities.
- Value: The website’s service, product, or content must immediately provide value to your target audience. Otherwise, you’ll quickly lose the interest of these visitors, and they may feel you’ve wasted their precious time.
These principles can help optimize your website for users and convert potential leads into paying customers.
Effective Tips To Optimize Your Website’s User Experience
Now you know that user experience is about helping visitors navigate a website easily for information, buying, and other action. Next, find ways to ensure that your is user-friendly from all angles.
Here Is What You Need To Do To Optimize Your Website For User Experience
01. Optimize Your Website’s Loading Speed
Ideally, a website should load within 3 seconds. Such a website helps the conversion of visitors. Knowing how annoying and inconvenient slow site loading speeds can be, you need to work how you can improve site speed to improve your visitor’s user experience. Luckily, optimizing your site’s loading speeds doesn’t have to be complicated.
Here Are Some Ideas On What You Can Do:
- Enable browser HTTP caching to enhance your website’s page loading
- Minify JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
- Optimize the images on your website
- Use a Content Distribution Network or Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Lower the number of HTTP requests
Your site’s loading speeds can improve drastically with these measures. This will, in turn, reduce your website’s bounce rate and increase conversions.
02. Maintain A Clean Website Design
Cluttered website design scares away visitors as they get confused or become annoyed, leading them to leave your website. Such users are unlikely to revisit your website.
You can prevent this by simplifying elements in your website so it can be organized and straightforward to look at and navigate. This makes your website more appealing to the eye. It also makes it easy for your visitors to find whatever information they’re looking for.
When It Comes To Creating A Clean and Simple Website Design, Here Are A Few Ways To Do It:
- Include only the necessary details on your site’s landing page
- Minimize the number of pages
- Restrict your color scheme. If possible, stick with two or three tones
- Use whitespaces
- Ensure your site is organized logically
With these approaches, you can give your website a clean design, which is integral to capturing the attention of your target audience. In addition, a clean design can also help increase visitors’ time on your website.
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03. Check Typographic & Visual Hierarchies
It’s essential to maintain your website’s typographic and visual hierarchies. A well-thought-out use of typography helps improve your website’s readability. Typography will also make your website stand out from competitors’ sites. It also helps boost your site’s usability by showing the order of significance within the data.
Ideally, more important texts should be bigger, bolder, or darker. Conversely, the less important text should be put lower on a website page, and it may be in smaller fonts. This way, your website content will look presentable and organized, contributing to a more pleasant user experience.
To Help You With This, The Four Levels That Can Make Your Content Easily Readable Include
- Title (H1)
- Headings (H2)
- Sub-headings (H3)
- Body text/paragraph.
In Addition, Set Up Your Site’s Visual Hierarchy by Considering These Factors
- Color
- Size
- Position
- Weight
- Contrast
Using your unique visual and typographic hierarchies can distinguish you from any rival website. This goes a long way in leaving a positive impression on your target audience while ensuring you remain competitive in your niche.
04. Use High-Quality Original Images
Most people love visual content as it is easier to remember and is highly shareable. And for most website users, the images on your site can help them decide whether they’ll consider buying your products or services; hence, the importance of using original and high-quality images on your website.
With this in mind, avoid using stock photos. Visitors can easily spot if a particular picture has already been used on another website. They can also tell a stock photo due to its generic and non-personal nature. With such images, you will lose the trust of your target audience, which can hurt your company’s brand and reputation.
According to a study by Spectrum Inc., replacing cheesy stock images with real pictures led to a 45% jump in conversation rate. While stock images boast superb quality, use authentic photos to convey your message for products, services, and brands.
05. Include An Appealing Call To Action On All Web Pages
A call to action (CTA) helps users easily navigate different web pages and find what they want. CTAs also motivate users to proceed to the next step, which is why they’re written in active words and use bold buttons.
Choose eye-catching CTAs for your website. To make them visually attractive, consider the psychology of color. However, you must be careful with your choice of color, as this can either increase your website’s conversion or negatively affect the site’s user experience.
Many times, website users will be redirected to a service page or an online scheduling tool to book an appointment after clicking on the CTA. But this doesn’t always have to be the case.
Some Other Ideas To Consider Include The Following:
- A link to linked blog posts across the entire blog or at the bottom section.
- A link to your contact page where they can find a form to submit.
- The option to subscribe to your company’s newsletter or blog.
- Downloadable PDFs such as valuable guides, product catalogs, and spec sheets.
- Links to other web pages on your website for additional details on a particular topic.
- A link to your website’s login portal either as a paid user, employee, or volunteer.
With all that said, you must ensure your CTAs are time-sensitive, actionable, and connotes the right tone for them to be more effective in gaining the interest of your audience.
06. Use White Spaces
Another essential element you must embrace to improve your website’s user experience is white spaces, also known as negative space. Using white spaces around your content can help make your website appear more polished, elegant, and simple.
White spaces help make it easier for visitors to scroll down your pages and navigate your website without feeling overwhelmed. It can give users breathing room when browsing the contents on your page. And due to its contrast, it can help highlight CTAs further and create a visual hierarchy appealing to the eye.
Here Are Some Ideas On How You Can Best Use White Spaces On Your Site To Boost Readability and Attractiveness To Enhance Visitors’ User Experience:
- Don’t let pictures align with your text; instead, place them below or on the top of the text blocks.
- Group and border-connected objects with white space.
- Increase the line spacing for texts in the body.
- Increase the white space on the right and left margins in long text blocks.
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07. Ensure Mobile Optimization
Most internet users access websites using their smartphones. So, make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Otherwise, you could risk losing a significant percentage of your site visitors because of needing help navigating your website.
Also, note that Google is pushing for mobile optimization by punishing websites that aren’t mobile-friendly. So, to avoid such penalties and increase your site’s chances of ranking high in search engines.
Here’s A Look At Some Ideas For Making Your Site Mobile-Friendly:
- Ensure the forms are concise and only mention crucial information.
- Only concentrate on the essentials, which should be at least two clicks away.
- Incorporate reachable buttons you can use to activate your mobile site.
- Include a sticky menu that users can use to quickly go to a particular article or any of your subcategory product pages.
Wrapping Up
While designing your website, check its ability to provide an excellent user experience to visitors. Make your website design simple so users can navigate it effortlessly to access information during their buying journey. A faster loading time, unique typography, original images, white space, and CTAs at different places will make a memorable experience for users.