Prioritizing the user experience on our website should be our first priority. Why? Offering excellent user experiences will boost visitors’ engagement, which will improve conversions, decrease bounce rates, and improve search engine results.
Positive user experiences increase the likelihood that visitors will convert to clients or customers. Users are less likely to click away or simply “bounce” after a short while if they are actively using our site and having fun.
Additionally, websites that offer an outstanding user experience are rewarded with higher ranks by search engines such as Google.
The following numbers demonstrate how crucial the user experience is:
- Poor usability is the reason behind up to 70% of failed web enterprises.
- According to up to 75% of customers, a company’s website design influences their perception of its legitimacy.
- After a bad user experience, up to 88% of visitors are less likely to visit the website again.
In other words, the secret to a successful website is satisfied users. By making sure that our website is user-friendly and offers a satisfying experience to visitors, we can increase the likelihood that they will return and make purchases.
Thus, what steps should we take to begin enhancing our user experience?
Here are some pointers:
1. Make the website’s design simpler.
The goal of effective web design is to create a visually appealing, user-friendly website that makes people want to return. There are a gazillion minor choices to make, like selecting the appropriate fonts and colors and structuring our information so that it is easy to read.
But there are a few general guidelines that can help streamline the design process and improve the user experience on our website.
Employ a straightforward color palette and font.
Visitors may concentrate better on our information with a simple, uncluttered structure, and a small number of color types can provide coherence and unity. In terms of typography, employing a few well-selected fonts can also be beneficial to keep our designs simple and tidy.
Make use of submenus and collapsed menus.
A poor user experience might arise from having too many menu choices that make it difficult for visitors to find what they’re looking for. We must therefore only add links that are really necessary and utilize menus sparingly. Sub-menus and drop-down menus are additional options. Micro-interactions that help you arrange your stuff even more.
Items pertaining to the collective
Sorting relevant content into groups is one way to guarantee a positive user experience.
For instance, rather than posting all of your content on one page if your blog has several categories, think about making distinct pages for each topic. Visitors will find it simpler to locate the precise information they seek as a result.
Carry out usability testing.
A crucial component of web design is usability testing, which makes sure that the target audience can easily browse and use the website. Numerous techniques can be used to accomplish this, including focus groups, surveys, and user interviews. Tracking software can also be used to observe user activity. Web designers can carefully evaluate the demands and preferences of the target audience by using our Usability Testing Guide.build a webpageThe total user experience is enhanced by its visual appeal and ease of usage.
2. Verify that each link is legitimate.
Visitors find broken links annoying, and they can give the impression that our website is amateurish. They can, of course, also hurt your site’s search engine rankings.
Spend some time periodically verifying that all of the links on your website are operational to prevent this.
Each connection can be manually examined to ensure functionality. Although it can take some time, this is the most effective way to ensure that everything functions as it should. As an alternative, we can utilize Ahrefs or Google Webmaster Tools to find any broken links.
3. Make sure each page has a sitemap and a search bar.
Most people who visit websites do so with a clear goal in mind. They want to be able to quickly and easily discover information, whether it is general information, directions to our organization, or details about a product or service. It is crucial that every website have a search bar because of this.
In this manner, users may quickly key in their search terms and be directed to the appropriate page. By doing this, we increase user satisfaction and lower the percentage of users who abandon our site before discovering what they’re looking for.
Bruno Marotta from the website for the Jigsaw Puzzle”We added a search feature to help find puzzles quickly,” says “I am a puzzle,” adding that “our bounce rate decreased because our users were able to find what they wanted immediately.” We also added information to our database about the jigsaw puzzles that individuals were interested in purchasing.
To further enhance the usability of our website, we can include a sitemap to complement our search bar. A list of all web pages, typically arranged hierarchically, is called a sitemap.
Viewers are able to quickly determine which pages are available on our website. This works particularly well if your website is big and has a lot of material.
Secondly, by assisting search engines in better indexing our website, a sitemap can raise its visibility and search engine rankings.
4. To improve user experience, employ visually appealing content.
Using images on our website is a terrific approach to draw people in and spark curiosity. It’s crucial to utilize them carefully, though, and to limit your use to pictures and animations that are pertinent to our content.
The ideal ratio of image to text should not exceed 1:5. Accordingly, we ought to limit the number of images to one for every five text blocks.
When it comes to using videos and animations, we should try to keep them to no more than ten seconds. It’s crucial to make sure a brief, repeating animation doesn’t divert the reader’s attention away from our content. It is recommended to exclude unnecessary content from our internet videos and focus just on the most crucial elements.
5. Make limited use of pop-ups
Pop Ups can be a useful tool for promoting special deals or gathering visitor information.
They can be bothersome and invasive, though. It’s crucial to utilize them sparingly as a result.
Pop-ups should only be used when they are relevant to the user and we know they won’t bother them.
For instance, if one of your articles is protected by a paywall, you can think about employing a pop-up to provide readers with a preview of the piece or the opportunity to upgrade their access. Or, if you’re doing a promotion or contest, a coupon code appears.This may be a useful strategy for encouraging sign-ins.
In order to allow consumers to close pop-ups when they choose not to be interested, we should also make sure they are simple to dismiss. To assist you in creating pop-ups that convert well and won’t upset your users, you might invest in smart pop-up software.
The oneWordPress survey plugin is another option.Make engaging quizzes for your website to increase visitor engagement and lengthen their stay on the page.
6. Make the website responsive to various browsers and devices.
Approximately 90% of people worldwide use the internet, according to Statista data. It’s crucial to ensure that our website is responsive and displays well across a range of screen sizes because of this.
Generally speaking, our website should be made to be user-friendly on desktop and mobile platforms. This entails utilizing big font sizes and buttons while maintaining a straightforward style. To make images and animations look excellent on small displays, we need also crop and resize them.
To ensure proper display, we should additionally test our website across a variety of browsers.
Although Google Chrome is the most widely used browser on the planet, it’s still vital to check our website on other platforms like Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari.
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool allows us to check how our website appears across a range of devices and browsers. Google will show you how your website appears on various devices if you only enter its URL.
7. Leverage social evidence to enhance user experience
You’ve witnessed social proof in action if you’ve ever been scrolling through social media and come across an advertisement or post that has a lot of likes, shares, or comments.
A psychological phenomenon known as “social proof” happens when people choose to follow through on an activity after witnessing others do it.
Let’s take an example where you are thinking about purchasing a new item from an internet retailer. Your likelihood of making a purchase increases if you notice that the product has a lot of positive customer evaluations.
Alternatively, you are more likely to believe that an article is worthwhile of your time and attention if you are reading it on a website and notice that it has been shared hundreds of times.
Social proof affects our conduct in both situations by informing us about what other individuals are doing. Despite the impression that social proof is limited to social media, companies can use it to enhance their website’s user experience in a variety of ways.
8. Include chatbots and AI
Live chat plugins, chatbots, and artificial intelligence (AI)This might be applied to enhance our website’s user experience.
AI can offer recommendations and pertinent content to customize the user experience. Information about the user’s preferences and behavior can be gathered to achieve this.
Conversely, chatbots can be utilized to assist customers and respond to any questions they might have. They are also useful.Make a chat widget to quickly link clients to different message services.
There are no-code application platforms that make it simple to create AI and chatbot solutions even if you don’t know how to code.
9. Boost the security of websites
An essential component of any website is security. It contributes to both a great user experience and the defense of our website from threats.
Users of our website should have peace of mind knowing that no unsolicited content will be displayed to them as they explore.
We need to make our website more secure.Verify if our website is using HTTPS. This will make it more difficult for hackers to intercept the data by encrypting the communication between our website and the browsers of visitors. To accomplish this, you can install an SSL certificate on your server.
Additionally, we ought to have our own software and Modern Website Plugins.
Our website visitors are less likely to have errors or other issues when surfing if our website is kept up to date.
They can navigate easily and seamlessly in this way without having to worry about their safety.
10. Quicken the load time of websites
A webpage should load in fewer than three seconds, according to the typical user. You run the danger of losing visitors if your website loads slower than that.
In fact, if a website takes longer than three seconds to load, up to 53% of mobile users will leave, according to Google. Thus, what steps can we take to make our website faster?
These are a few indicators;
Personalize the files
Reducing file size without sacrificing quality is what we mean by optimizing our files. This is achieved by choosing the appropriate file format, minifying CSS and JavaScript scripts, and compressing images and videos.
For instance, PNGs are ideal for graphics with transparent backgrounds, whereas JPEGs are excellent for pictures.
Turn on the browser’s cache.
Our website can store some of its files locally on users’ computers thanks to browser caching. In this manner, their browser won’t have to download the files from our server again when they visit our site again because they are cached.
Our website will load more quickly as a consequence.
Make use of CDNs
Globally dispersed servers make up the CDN network. Our website files are kept on these servers when we use CDN, and users are served content according to their geographical location.
As a result of the files traveling a shorter distance, this can make our website load faster.
Overall
We must modify, add, and improve a few things for our users in order to better their experience on our website.
Us Simplify the layout of our website, proofread it, and utilize graphics and pop-ups only occasionally. To aid users in navigating our website, we should also incorporate a search bar, site map, social proof, and AI.
We should also work to improve our website’s speed, security, and usability so that everyone may browse without interruption. We can get the greatest website user experience by heeding the ten suggestions listed above.
