Website UX Improvements That You Can Do In A Day
Think of the last time you stepped into your favourite mall or supermarket? You know exactly where all your products are, which aisle or which level. In the physical retail world, a store experience and customer service are the strongest drivers of loyalty and return footfall - and the digital world is no different. Design, atmosphere, speed, and service are all pillars of a great consumer experience, and these same concepts ring true to digital experiences as well.
A great user experience on your site ensures that your visitors can find everything they’re looking for with ease and speed. Your main aim is to create a content-rich, meaningfully designed site that keeps your customers engaged and then subsequently take action.
Here’s some quick tips below to create a site that’s easy to use and provides an engaging, action-oriented experience for the visitor.
Optimize images and video: Speed matters. Every fraction of a second a visitor waits for your site to load, their frustration grows—and that frustration is aimed at your brand. Images and video account for a significant portion of that load time. Make sure you’re not making your visitors download a gigantic image that’s only being used as a tiny thumbnail. A website set up properly on a content management system (CMS) will do this automatically for you, but if that’s not the case, there are plenty of free tools available that you can use to optimize your images before adding them to the site.
Avoid stock photos: Cheesy stock photography is the quickest way to turn a great site into a generic one. The typical user can spot a stock photo from a mile away, and it instantly devalues your website. For example, if you’re looking for a photo to use on your “Contact Us” page, try a picture of your actual team rather than using the same stock photo of a woman wearing a headset that all your other competitors use.
Protect your brand: So you ran an A/B test and found that the garish neon green button converts better than the on-brand accent blue used consistently throughout your site. Is a 1 percent increase in conversions really worth the damage that eyesore will do to your brand? A/B testing is great, but keep in mind that the design affects more than what people click—it affects how they think about your company.
Be clear: Find a way to distill what your business does down to a clear, concise statement, and lead with that. There’s a time and place for mystery and intrigue, but the main headline of a business website is not it. Visitors shouldn’t have to read the entire site to figure out what your business does; they should be able to understand what you do within a couple seconds of landing on your homepage. A few well-written pages will be infinitely more effective than dozens of poorly-written ones.
Well-placed calls to action: Tests have shown that a call-to-action button performs best at the point in the page where the visitor also finds the information they need. Rather than plastering calls-to-action throughout the site and bombarding visitors at every turn, use a more strategic approach and place the button at the point where the visitor is prepared to take action. The best way to do this is to put yourself into their shoes and mindset and create the journey with their fears in mind.
Oftentimes, we get so caught up in ensuring that our websites appear in relevant searches that we forget how important it is to ensure that once customers and partners do arrive at our website, we are giving them the best possible experience. These tips should get you on your way.
