Are people coming to your website only to go away a few seconds later without doing anything? You might have a UX problem with your site.
Investing in user experience isn't only good for your customers, but it's also good for your bottom line. Studies show that you can expect an average of 9,900% return on investment when you invest in design.
If you need help getting your website user experience right, this post will help. Follow the user experience tips below to improve the UX of your website.
Add White Space
It's critical to have a website that grabs the user's attention as soon as they arrive. With so many distractions on the internet these days, you only have a few seconds to convince someone that your site has the answers they're looking for. It's hard to do that with a cluttered website.
White space gives the design elements of your site to breathe. It allows you to draw attention to only the most critical information your page has. With additional bloat, it becomes difficult for people to find what they're looking for.
If you want to optimize your white space, keep the most critical information at the top of the page so people see it as soon as they arrive. They should know your page has the answer as soon as they reach your site.
Make Content Easy to Scan
People don't read as much as they used to on the web. Yes, some people will go to your site and read every piece of content they can. For others, they want to get in and out as soon as possible.
For people wanting to find information quickly, you'll need to provide a way to scan your content without reading every piece of content you have.
The best way to do this is by highlighting your important content sections with subheadings. Keep your subheadings informative and use them to separate your essential areas. Anyone should be able to scan your content in a few seconds to learn what information your article contains.
Another option is to use bullet points to highlight information. Bullet points are great for making essential facts stand out while creating an attractive website feature that breaks up your web content.
Optimize for Mobile Devices
More people are browsing the web on mobile than ever, and that number isn't expected to go down anytime in the future. In fact, as the rest of the world begins to come online, that number will likely go up even more.
This means that you can't afford to design your website with only desktop users in mind. If you do, you'll isolate and turn away a good majority of your audience. If you want your site to work well for everyone, you'll need to create a mobile-optimized site.
The easiest way to do this is with a responsive design. A responsive web design will provide a UX user experience that changes based on your visitor's device's size. Your site will detect someone's screen's dimensions when they arrive and alter the design to fit their device.
The best way to do this is with a mobile-first design. This means you'll design for a small screen first and add features for larger screens later. It's easier to add elements to a web design than remove them, so creating your site minimally first will save time and money in the development process.
Improve Your Page Performance
Your website UI isn't the only thing that will improve the user experience for your mobile users. You can't count on people on mobile devices to have a reliable internet connection when they're out and about. If you have a site with poor performance, your page load time will negatively impact your user experience.
If you run an image-heavy site, your first step is to optimize your images. If you run software like WordPress, download an image compression plugin to run lossless compression on your web images to reduce their file sizes without impacting quality. If you don't use website software, you'll need to use desktop software to handle this task.
The next step is to implement caching on your website. Caching will store a static copy of any page on your website created on the fly when someone visits your site. This process will reduce database calls to your web server by providing a static HTML file to your web visitors.
If you use website software, it also pays to reduce the number of plugins you use. The more plugins your visitors need to load when they arrive, the more content they have to download to their devices. Check your software to find unused plugins and remove them from your site.
Track User Activity
You can do all the research you want and still end up not giving people what they want. The problem is that you can't always ask people what makes them happy when they browse the internet.
You'll need to do more in-depth research if you want to make the most of your optimization efforts. You do this by adding tracking scripts to your site to monitor user activities.
The most basic tracking to implement is visitor analytics. This tracking software will track which pages users visit, how long they stay and set goal pages that work with advertising platforms.
Of course, basic tracking does have limits. You won't be able to see exactly what people do when looking through your pages. If you want to see how users interact with your site, install heatmap software to see what people do when reading your web content.
If you want a more in-depth look at tracking, visit decibel.com to learn what other information you can see when working with tracking software.
Don't Underestimate the Importance of Website User Experience
You can't afford to provide a poor website user experience in a world where an alternative is available in just a few clicks. You only have a few seconds to make a great first impression, so make sure you use the tips above to provide a web experience worth coming back to.
If you found these usability tips useful, our blog can help you get the rest of your site sorted. Read our latest posts to learn everything else to know about optimizing your website for your business.
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