According to Nielsen Norman Group, a user experience consulting company,
User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services and its products.
You’ve probably heard a thing or two about user experience (UX) and how it impacts on your branding, marketing and, ultimately, sales. Your website (or mobile application) must provide great user experience to your users at all times. In other words, users must have a great time when using your website or app.
This post is all about improving how users perceive your web or mobile application. Enjoy and keep the conversation going in the comment section 🙂
Increase your Page Load Speeds
A slow website will send away even the most of patient customers. That’s right, nothing sucks more than a slow website. It goes without saying that if you hope to provide better user experience, you must speed up your site. What to do?
- Analyze your site using speed testing tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom or GTMetrix.
- Optimize your images
- Use the minimal number of plugins on your site
- Say no to Flash and adopt the latest web technologies and techniques
- Take advantage of caching and content delivery networks (CDNs)
- Choose the right web host
Make Possible Actions Clear
A website is made of ‘static’ and ‘interactive’ content. Static content includes text, images and audio among other files that do not require users to initiate interaction. Interactive content include buttons, CTAs (Call To Action), handles and links among others. Improve user experience by making interactive objects stand out from surrounding content.
Embrace Data-Driven Design
As web designers, we are generally concerned with two major types of data:
- Qualitative data – Gives perspective and shows how or why
- Quantitative data – Shows scale: the who, when, what and where
Use both data types to gather insight about your site and then design your website accordingly. In content marketing, this is known as defining your target audience, which helps you to create focused content that provides results.
Improve Your Navigation
If your navigation sucks, your user experience will with a doubt suck. If your web visitors cannot find stuff on your website, what do you suppose will happen? They will leave and never come back. Don’t send your visitors to competitors, build clear and easy to use navigation menus. Your users will love you for the ingenuity.
Use Clickable Logos
When a user goes several pages deep into your website, clicking the back button is completely out of question if they are looking to go back to the homepage. This is where clickable logos come in. It is easy to implement and will earn you major UX points.
Implement Mobile Friendly/Responsive Design
Responsive web design utilizes the latest web techniques to create web applications that look great and perform optimally across your devices. If a user cannot use or view your website on their mobile devices, you are out the door.
Utilize Search
You get to a site that looks really good. The website is all about the topic you are interested in so you’re really psyched. You want to find information quickly but they don’t have a search box. You end up stuck because you can’t comb the entire website for the information you need. You conclude the site sucks big time and leave. Make it easy for readers to find information on your website by using a search bar. Come on, just make your readers happy.
Where the White Space at?
Content, content and more content. Where is the breathing space man? Chunks of content will have no impact if you don’t utilize some space. Moreover, your call to action buttons will have more impact if your surround them with enough white space. By the way, white space can be any color provided it is empty space ;).
Make Your Website Social
Whether you want to accept it or live in denial, social media is here to stay. Making it easy for users to connect with your website on various social networks is a great way of improving user experience. Additionally, you can allow users to sign up or login to your site using their favorite social platform(s). This will speed up member acquisition and conversion.
Educate Potential Customers
The main goal of content marketing is to attract clients by providing relevant and valuable content. Who knew you could use this exact approach to improve user experience on your website? Provide relevant, valuable and consistent information to your visitors and they will develop a positive attitude towards your business.
At the end of the day…
Everything boils down to one thing: you should endeavor to build a website that is not only visually appealing but also practical and useful to your clients. You should understand your target audience and then build your website from their perspective.
How do you improve user experience on your site?
