Let’s for once take an inward look at things. If you are lagging behind, how would you improve user experience on your website? How would I do it? Would I read blogs such as this or would I look into my business for the answers? For instance, what’s the purpose of your website? How would you like to realize this purpose? And what’s the use of a website that sucks the life out of your users?
See, each website has a purpose, and more importantly, the best user experience that helps you to realize said purpose. User experience encompasses all the things you do to boost user activity on your site.
That’s true, great user experience equals maximal user activity. In other words, you need to create amazing user experience to get more users, more emails, more leads – you get my drift. It is simple work, I promise, but never do any changes to your site without first backing up every file.
Would you like to improve user experience on your site? If that’s a resounding yes, you’re in for a great treat. Walk with me.
Create Amazing Content
Really, user experience extends far beyond design. Content, too, is a part of the equation. Unfortunately, there’s just so much to say about creating awesome content we’d need an eBook. All the same, create killer content that’s relevant to your readers, that solves their problems; content that’s educative. It should be consistent too.
Build Better Navigation
What’s the use of creating awesome content that no one ever reads? You need users to find your content, services and products. You need seamless navigation that is easy to find and doesn’t lose readers. Don’t overwhelm your readers with numerous options, keep your navigation simple. 3 to 5 items. Add other features such as search and a sitemap to improve navigation.
Responsive Design
Unless you live under a rock, you must have heard a thing or two about responsive web design. If RWD is entirely new to you, worry not, it’s merely a design technique that ensures your website looks amazing and performs well on all devices, irrespective of screen size. Build websites with a mobile-first approach.
Improve Page Load Speeds
If your website takes an eternity to load, it doesn’t take rocket science to know you’re losing prospects left, right and center. I’m yet to meet a person who puts up with slow loading websites. Plus, Google hates slothful websites, so you will lose search rankings as well, which culminates in lost traffic. Build lightweight pages and invest in premium web hosting.
Fix Broken Links
Next to slow pages is 404 pages. You don’t want readers landing on 404 error pages, since chances are higher they will leave. If a user clicks on a link on your site, they expect to get where they intended. If a broken link stands in their way, they will abandon your site. Check your site for broken links, and create an engaging 404 error page should the worst happen.
Differentiate Your Links
Seeing we just mentioned links, how visible are your links? You don’t even have to stress much in this area; the good ole standard links will do just fine. Problem is some designers throw their entire CSS arsenal behind links, ruining the intended purpose of links. I have been on a website that had links, but they were invisible since they looked just like normal text. Poor design, guys, is a real problem.
Shorter Forms
How many times will you read about this? While it’s not as prevalent nowadays as was the case in the past, long forms suck. If you need to collect more information from your readers, you can design standalone surveys or at least break down your forms into parts. Provide clear navigation that allows readers to move to different parts of your form.
Calls To Action Matter
Oh yeah they do. Yours need to invite action. Your CTAs have a higher chance at success if they are clear and well placed. The text on your buttons matters too, seeing as verbs elicit more action compared to nouns. Placing CTA buttons above the fold will also have better conversions as I discovered on my portfolio website. I sent more clients to my hire page simply by including a CTA on my landing page. Previously, I had a slider above the fold, which – in retrospect – was dumb.
White Space
One mistake all beginners, your truly included, make is squeezing everything they have on the landing page. At first, this seems like the most logical thing you can ever do, but it’s illogical by many standards. Firstly, you clutter your design. Secondly, you slow down your landing page. Moreover, you divide readers’ attention and I could go on and on. Let your content breathe; throw in some white space into the mix and see the results yourself. Not confident in your own design skills? Leave the heavy lifting to one of these landing page plugins for WordPress.
Test and Repeat
It is not enough to apply these changes and sit back. You need to test your website’s functionality to ascertain you have exactly what your users need. After all, user experience is all about the user, which means it doesn’t matter if your site looks amazing in, say, Chrome, but 90% of your readers use Mozilla.
Check your metrics to learn more about your readers and adjust accordingly. Test, rinse and repeat until you get the perfect solution for your readers. That’s how you build the best user experience.
Any Thoughts?
User experience is all about delivering the right information, in the right way and at the right time. This way, your readers will get to your solutions without a hassle. Your site will realize its purpose and you will achieve your goals.
How do you improve user experience on your website? We welcome your questions, suggestions and comments in the section below. Cheers!
