A website is an integral part of your marketing efforts. A great website encourages the users to spend more time on it and ultimately drive conversions. Think about your own experience when interacting with any website. You would willingly spend more time on a website that is quick, aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. Conversely a poorly designed website would make you want to exit it as soon as possible.
Your website is an important asset for your business. All your marketing and advertising campaigns are going to lead users to a landing page on your website. This is where they interact with your brand and get to know it better. Hence, it is important to create a smooth and seamless experience for them. A website with a great user experience has the potential to drive more engagement and conversions. In this article, we will discuss different ways to help you improve your website’s user experience.
What is User Experience (UX)?
User experience or UX is the behavior, emotions or attitude a user expresses when interacting with a website. This experience depends on many factors including the website design, ease of navigation and accessibility. UX determines what your user’s think or feel when interacting with your website.
The aim here is to create a seamless, enjoyable and valuable experience for your target audience each time they interact with your website. This encourages them to trust your website and your brand.
How to Improve User Experience?
Working on improving your website’s user experience can seem intimidating. But it doesn’t have to be. Analyze your website performance to see what areas need improvement. Then spend time on one area at a time to ensure that you get the results you want. Here are some ways on how you can start improving user experience.
Create an appealing layout
Layout is an important element in the design of your website. It organizes the content on your web pages. When your visitors come to your website, they need to find the information they look for easily. The website layout should also be pleasing to the eyes. If a layout is confusing or hard to navigate users might leave the website. Hence, to create a good impression on your users the first thing to work on is your layout.
There is no one way of creating a perfect layout. You can be as creative or simple as you want with the layout of your webpages. However, there are a few things you need to be aware of. First, the layout should be aligned with your brand image. Your layout should give the users a feel of your brand and its story. It should have properly organized information for users to access. You can never go wrong with embracing simplicity in your design.
Make sure to use the appropriate amount of white space in your layout. White space is the area between various design elements on your page including the space between typography. It makes the text on your page more readable. If there are too many elements like images, texts, headings, links or videos cramped together, it can be hard for users to focus on the content. Conversely, having too much white space between elements can make your page look incomplete, empty and unprofessional. All these elements should be distributed evenly throughout the page with an appropriate amount of space. This balance makes the web page look more fresh, modern and appealing to the users creating a good user experience.
Use typographic hierarchies
Text should be properly organized on your pages so that it is legible. Users should easily be able to distinguish between various typographic elements. This is how the hierarchies should be:
- Title (H1)
- Headings (H2)
- Sub-headings (H3)
- Paragraph/body text
This hierarchy should be maintained throughout your website. These formats make it easy for a user to distinguish between different headings or subheadings and highlights the important keywords on your page. You can also use visual hierarchies like font weight, size or color to highlight the importance of certain texts. The text becomes easy to read and therefore contributes to the quality of your website.
Use Bullet Points
Bullet points allow you to further organize your text so that it is more accessible to the users. With bullet points users can get the key information they are looking for quickly. Oftentimes users have a limited attention span. They do not have the time to go through the extensive paragraphs of information. A user will simply skim through the entire page looking for the key piece of information.
Hence, bullet points make it easier for them to get the information they need. If they quickly have access to that information, they will spend more time on your website researching more. Bullet points also make the page more visually appealing. You can add different icons to segment your information. This will add more fun elements to the page instead of just making it look boring with a lot of text.
Add eye-catching CTAs
CTAs or call to action buttons encourage users to take certain actions. They use action words like ‘Signup Free’, ‘Read more’, or ‘Download now’. Use words that are action-oriented and encourage the users to take the next step. It should be relevant to the content you are placing it with.
Along with creating compelling texts for the CTAs, you also need to ensure that it is attractive and gets the attention of the user. To create eye-catching CTAs, you can use colors and fonts to make it appealing. Make sure that the color scheme and fonts are aligned to your brand image. Use the same CTAs consistently across your website.
Ensure that hyperlinks are identifiable
You want the users to click on the link you place on a web page. But sometimes the links can get mixed up with the rest of the content and users might not click on it. To ensure that your links are visible give it some differentiable attribute. There are many visual elements you can add to these hyperlinks. You can use italics, colors, underlined text etc. to make the links more visible. The best way is to use color that is different from the rest of your text. This can make the link easily visible to the users and they will click on it.
Monitor your page Speed
It is important to keep monitoring your site speed. One of the main reasons for a high bounce rate is a slow website. It can be quite frustrating for users to end up on a website that is slow. The user will definitely end up exiting that page and lose trust on the website. Users might be hesitant to submit any personal information or payment details on that website. As users are in a hurry always, they become impatient with a slow website. Hence, it is important that you ensure that your website is fast. Tools like Google Analytics can give you reports on the speed of your website and which pages are slow.
If your website is performing slowly you can optimize it to reduce page load time. To improve page speed, ensure that you use compressed images. Heavy file sizes can sometimes make a web page slow. Also, ensure that your website is optimized for use on mobile and other devices. Most users access websites using their mobile phones. Sometimes, technical errors can also cause the site to slow down. In this case you can take help of a developer to help you in these technical areas.
Consistency is key when it comes to improving your user experience. In all these strategies mentioned above ensure that you are consistent in implementing them across your website. Your layout, CTAs, color schemes, fonts etc. should all be used harmoniously across all web pages. This creates a strong brand image and helps you improve the quality of your website. When you create a pleasant experience for your users, they will engage more with your content and trust your brand. A strong user experience will help make your marketing efforts more successful by driving conversions or sales.
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