3 Tips to Improve Your User Experience
We are almost at the end of a decade with the roaring 20’s on the horizon. While much has changed in the last ten years with respect to user experience in web design, the fundamentals that have been established are not going anywhere anytime soon.
Think of your website as your brick and mortar store. People come to your site for a purpose. Maybe it’s to purchase an item or maybe it’s to learn more about your brand — either way your overall user experience plays an integral role in wether or not the people that walk into your “store” take the action you want them to. So, when designing your website, think about it as if you were designing your brick and mortar store and keep the following in mind.
Make Mobile a Priority
You are probably reading this on a mobile device and you’re not alone in that. 63% of mobile internet users access the internet from their smartphone. That is up almost 20% from the middle of the decade. Designing with mobile in mind is critical to the success of your overall site. 57% say that they will not recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site. That’s a lot of people coming in your store only to leave!
Making the right first impression is everything on mobile. For starters, make sure your site is responsive. While this may go without saying, you really want to pay attention to how your site looks and moves on mobile. Is the navigation easy to find? Are your images loading slowly? How many clicks does it take for the user to find the information they are looking for? All of these factors and more play into your overall mobile experience.
Organize Your Navigation Logically
Customer-Driven design is one of the biggest buzz words of the decade. Designing your site from the eyes of the consumer is the best way to lay the groundwork for a successful site.
This starts by telling your site visitors exactly what you want them to do when they arrive. Clear calls to action and clean design help with the flow of your site. Put your most important information above the fold as succinctly as you can, followed by a call to action button to direct the user where you want them to go. If you are retail store, design your site to showcase your featured products first with a link to shop those items specifically. If you are a service driven site, make your clear call to action on the homepage with a link to schedule an appointment or learn more. With today’s short attention spans, you only have about eight seconds to grab a user’s attention.
Your site’s menu also plays a big role in site structure and user experience. Think of this aspect as your brick and mortar store’s physical organization. Do you want to organize your store by color? Size? Feature? Department? All of these categories can help you better define your site navigation.
Keep your main menu short. Try to use no more than seven items with your most important links at the beginning and end of your menu. Additionally, minimize the need for dropdown menus — especially on mobile. When a user is presented with too many options it can become overwhelming. Always keep your menu visible throughout the site with compact floating menus so that the user can jump from page to page with ease.
Remove Obstacles to Action
As we mentioned earlier, in today’s world, we only have about eight seconds to grab a user’s attention. That is eight seconds to explain to your user why they need your product or service so that they take action. When someone walks into your physical store, they came in with an intention. They browsed your offerings in your organized store, overcame the mental obstacles to buying and made it to the finish line, so don’t make them wait in a long line to check out or get service! Make it simple.
Retail sites should focus on having as few clicks as possible to get to the checkout confirmation page. Think about Amazon and their one-click purchasing…it’s successful for a reason! Impulse buys are made that much easier with fewer clicks.
Service sites should focus on simplicity of achieving conversions. Make it simple and almost hard not to take action on your site. Ask them to contact you for a five minute consultation or tell them it takes only five minutes to set up or five clicks to start gaining the benefits of your product. This helps the user overcome mental and physical obstacles to action when they realize that not only do they need your product or service but it also won’t take them long at all to achieve it.
All in all, your user experience defines your brand. When designing your site, keep these tips in mind for the best experience possible and ultimately, the most conversions and success for you and your business!
