Good website design isn’t all about the aesthetics. Amazing imagery, a cutting-edge design and strong branding are all great to have, but what organisations really need to be focusing on is the user experience.
If you get UX right on your site, everything else will fall into place. According to research from Forrester, a well-designed interface for consumers can potentially boost conversion rates by as much as 400%.
With the importance of UX in mind, here are 8 quick tips for improving it on your site – whether you’re designing from scratch or giving your site a makeover:
- Strip everything back. To reinvent your website so that it functions better for users, you need to take it right back to basics. Then, when adding anything new to it, ask yourself – is it necessary, useful or valuable? If not, leave it out.
- Make good use of white space. Web users want to find the information they need quickly. You can help them to save time and quickly reach their goals by signposting the way with clever use of white space.
- Put yourself in the user’s shoes. You really need to tap into your emotional intelligence and capacity for empathy for this one, taking the time to go step-by-step through every part of your site to imagine exactly what the experience is like for a new user.
- Be consistent. Inconsistencies on your site can frustrate and unbalance the user, when you’re aiming for everything to be easy. You need to satisfy their expectations by ensuring that everything across the whole site is completely consistent.
- Build trust and credibility. Consumers need to feel comfortable and safe browsing and shopping on your site, so you need to use design to build confidence. Prove your credibility through user reviews and ratings, HTTPS for secure communications and anything else you can do to build trust.
- Above all, make sure your site loads quickly. Slow page loading can be one of the most frustrating things for web users, and can destroy the UX completely. Forget all of your hard work in other areas if site loading is painfully slow.
- Prioritise easy navigation. When designing navigation for your site, consider the needs of users who may not have such advanced web and computer skills as you. In fact, a study found that 43% of global consumers only have minimal computer skills. For this group, you need to make menus and navigation explicit, easy and uncomplicated. Point the way to navigate around your site, making menus and buttons unmissable.
- Test the site on real users. Test your new design on existing customers, to see if the site aligns with their expectations of the brand, and a second group of completely new users. Use their feedback to adjust the site and improve the UX even further.
For more help with web design and improving the user experience, get in touch with the experts here at Ambos Digital.
