Does your website provide a good user experience for your visitors? User experience (UX) refers to how a user interacts with/experiences a product, system or service. In the case of your website, your content and design should provide your users with a satisfying, fruitful experience, but that can be challenging to achieve.
We’ve all been on sites that immediately frustrate us because the font was tiny, a form was difficult to fill out, or the information you were searching for was impossible to find. What was your reaction? It’s likely you just left the site in frustration and tried another website to get what you wanted. It happens within seconds.
Creating a website that provides excellent UX means your visitors will stay longer on your site, hopefully long enough to become customers or complete your call to action.
Time spent on your site should feel productive and pleasant, and better UX can lead to increased engagement, including increased conversion rates.
How to Create a Good Website User Experience
Consider the visitors to your site: what are they looking for? Think about the customer’s needs and behaviors, and arrange the website in such a way that leads them to what they need.
Good web design will ensure that information is easy to find.
- Choose fonts and colors that provide the right size and contrast to make the words easy to read the first time.
- Use headlines to break up text into sections, making scanning easier for the reader.
- Organize the material logically with clear menus, intuitive flow and layout.
- Simple text in short paragraphs and well-placed buttons will quickly guide your users to what they need.
Because many of your visitors will be experiencing your site on their phones, make sure the site is optimized for mobile. A mobile-friendly website adapts to different screen sizes, providing consistent interaction on any device. This can contribute to higher conversion rates.
Good UX that Leads to Conversions
Now consider your goals for your site. This could include generating leads, sign-ups for mailing lists or appointment scheduling. Let your website design express your brand clearly to the visitors as they experience your site so that it leads them to complete the tasks you want them to. What problems of theirs can you solve? Use clear and compelling language to explain how you have the answer to their pain point and direct them to the solution as smoothly as possible.
Streamlined Design Leads to a Positive User Experience
Most users are scanning your website, not reading it. Make sure the information is laid out clearly, using headers and sidebars to guide visitors. Strive for clarity and simplicity; infographics can be a good way to condense complex text.
To keep the user’s progression moving, declutter the site, keeping information to the essentials. Consider limiting your color scheme. Simplify the process so there are the fewest possible steps leading to the call to action, and minimize any barriers that will impede the user from completing their desired actions. An obvious and accessible CTA can facilitate conversions.
At Trillion, our website redesign for the tutoring company Breakaway Prep employed those strategies. Art Director Jillian Dougherty explains:
“Our website design for Breakaway Prep aimed to bring to life their vibrant new brand in a way that resonated with students and parents alike. They needed a website that would showcase their expertise and generate leads. The website’s engaging user experience provides a clear understanding of their services, highlights the attributes that make them unique, and offers a smooth path to the desired CTA: signups for a consultation.”
Breakaway Prep’s new design offers excellent UX, and the website is pushing data into meaningful platforms that are helping the team run their business more efficiently.
Get Feedback to Guarantee UX Success
Iterative user testing and feedback are essential in UX design.
- Check your bounce rates, conversion rates and other metrics to see if your changes are resulting in better engagement
- Ask your users for feedback with surveys
- Use online tools and resources that help identify problem areas. We have received invaluable feedback with tools like Usability Hub, a research platform for testing the usability of your site.
- Get a complete heuristic evaluation: an examination of your site’s function by a third party based on accepted usability best practices. It can give micro-level insight into issues like user error recovery (helping them revise when they make a mistake filling out a form) and ways to minimize the user’s memory load by making all messaging and actions visible and accessible.
Google Core Web Vitals (CWV) Rates Your Site’s UX
Google Core Web Vitals are a set of factors that Google uses to evaluate a web page’s performance. It can be a good way to evaluate the UX of your site. Find your site’s CWV evaluation in one of two ways: in the Experience -> Core Web Vitals section of your Google Search Console account, or by entering your URL into Google’s PageSpeed Insights evaluator. CWV is looking at three main factors: page loading time, the time it takes for a user to first interact with your page, and how stable your page is as it loads.
Compliance with Google Core Web Vitals should be considered a top priority. Non-compliance often hinders a website’s ability to achieve its full potential for organic visibility.
Investment in User Experience Gives Great ROI
If website conversions are an important part of your revenue stream, website UX is crucial for your business. But in all cases, a good website UX results in a positive impression of your brand and good customer relations. At Trillion, we have helped many clients redesign their websites so that they engage their visitors, encourage them to spend more time on the site and give them the solutions they need. Our talented team of designers and marketers have used their skills to help many clients and we would love to help you, too. Give us a call at 908.219.4703 or fill out our contact form to get started.
