A simple, crucial, but often overlooked aspect of web design is user experience. You want to ensure that your site is accessible and navigable, especially if a consumer wants to make a purchase or fill out a contact form. Even if you have great products and services, you don’t want customers to lose interest due to confusion or complications with your website. Having a page that is well structured, straightforward, and compatible in all formats is essential to launching an engaging site.
No matter your type of business, it can be challenging to start managing and maintaining your own website. You want to ensure it captures your ideal vision for your company’s page while keeping in mind the consumer perspective. Our web designers at LSEO can provide you with their assistance, as they are professionals with an expansive knowledge of web design and development.
Take a look at the strategies outlined below to learn how you should be building your website around your audience.
How to Consider User Experience in Web Design
Through an online platform, you will have a place to highlight your business’s services and products. Read on to discover why user experience has become increasingly vital to a strong web design.
1.) Make It Mobile Responsive
Now more than ever, people enjoy accessing fast and convenient information right at their fingertips. Plus, it can be used for multiple purposes due to the advancements of digital devices, including making purchases online. You want to be sure your site is mobile friendly, as well. Your web pages should be fitted and optimized for the screen of the user’s device. All of your site’s applications should appear clear and organized, so they can be tapped on the screen. You shouldn’t limit yourself to having a site suitable only for desktop because this will prevent you from reaching a larger audience. Be sure to take advantage of mobile web design to encourage more traffic to your site.
2.) View It from the User Perspective
Engaging with your site from the user’s point of view allows you to see what your viewers see when they open your company’s web page. By exploring its layout and content, you will become aware of what’s working for your site and what is not. You should ask yourself which areas require improvement. Most likely, if there are sections of your page that you can’t navigate effortlessly, then the consumer will probably have the same challenges doing so. Those improvements could be anything from a drop-down box that is slightly hidden off-screen to a content page that’s missing vital information. Whatever optimizations you make, know that your company will appear more experienced and insightful about its services and products afterward.
3.) Develop a User Persona
For your company’s website, it is important to know your audience. It should represent the voice and emotions of who would like to use your services. Establishing an attractive tone will create a brand personality that customers can both associate with themselves and your business. On top of this, consumers enjoy welcoming content that is tailored according to their interests and answers questions they may have about your offerings. Providing solutions is an amazing sign to customers that your company is skillful and capable of addressing their needs. It will shine a light on your business that consumers will not forget.
4.) Incorporate Clear Content
A key aspect of developing any site is the content. Educating your audience to make smarter purchasing decisions compels them to come back and revisit your page. This is because it creates a positive experience for potential customers, reinforcing brand recollection and leaving a lasting impression. With today’s sites, consumers are expecting consistent high-quality content, as it helps them to build trust with a company. Further, you can interact with your website users through content. As a result, you can increase the number of leads and conversions your site receives.
5.) Utilize Interactive Elements Correctly
The interactive elements of a website are those parts that users can do things with. Buttons, for example, are a fundamental component of the usability of your site. They encourage users to carry out an action. If these types of elements aren’t placed where viewers expect them, they may not be found at all. You need to make them stand out from the rest of your content. After all, buttons are one of the primary ways users navigate across your website, which is why they need to appear clickable. They also need to state their intended function precisely. For instance, if a button claims it is going to bring you to the home screen, it should take you there rather than to your services page.
6.) Include Contact Information
Contact pages help to guide customers if they have any questions regarding your goods or services. Or, if your site isn’t in a format where customers can make direct purchases, they are going to need to reach out to you for your business to fulfill their needs. Providing your phone number, email, or address is necessary to ensuring possible clients have access to services. They should even know where all your nearest locations are, which can also be placed on this page. As a collaborative element, customers can connect with you through this feature. This is why it should be clear and organized: so you can obtain information about consumer interests or feedback about your company.
7.) Improve Your Internal Linking Structure
Now let’s bring in the SEO services aspect of things. Learning to link internally on your website is critical to making the whole site flow more naturally and be simpler to explore. Incorporating reliable and recognizable links within your content provides connections for viewers to visit other pages. It structures your site and establishes a hierarchy, allowing traffic to be directed toward your most valuable pages that would pique consumer interests. This then communicates to search engines what parts of your site deserve the most attention. Also, be sure to organize your website categorically, based on keywords used in your pages’ URLs and anchor text. For example, placing links at the end of articles or in a sidebar to relevant pages will encourage users to keep interacting with your site.
8.) Provide a Navigation Bar
One of the first components a viewer will look for when opening your site will be the navigation bar. At the top of the page, the nav should outline the information that potential customers would most likely be searching for and provide a gateway to access them. Not to mention, it helps viewers to orient themselves, and it should consistently appear on every page of the site. When creating your navigation bar, be sure to limit the number of categories it has to avoid cluttering it. You could even try A/B testing with different versions of your site to see which arrangements work best for your nav.
9.) Apply A/B Testing
Known as split or bucket testing, A/B testing is a method of comparing two forms of a web page against each other to rate their efficiency. This type of testing allows you to focus on which changes you wish to place on your site. Then, you can gauge what aspects users enjoy or keep coming back to. You can see what adjustments or enhancements must be made based on their interactions. Understanding the progression of traffic will help you to redesign your page for your customers if you need to. Often, the smallest tweaks can impact the overall performance of your site.
10.) Ensure Quick Loading
Last but not least is loading time. This may seem like a small factor, but it can make all the difference in whether a viewer follows through to your site. Mostly, people expect a page to open instantly once they have clicked on it. If it takes more than a few seconds, a possible customer will exit out of the site, and the opportunity for them to visit your site will be lost. For swift loading, remove any elements that are no longer in use, clear away extra multimedia photos or videos, and compress codes or files together. These elements can make your site too heavy to load, thereby preventing site from being user friendly.
Professional Web Design Services
There are endless ways to fashion an engaging and navigable site for users. Incorporating the strategies above will help your site to take off, as consumers will begin responding to all the easily accessible components of your page.
If you are looking for a strategic web design and development team, reach out to LSEO’s designers. Contact us today to start executing your campaign. Your revamped website will ensure your site encapsulates everything about your business while always keeping in mind your potential customers’ experiences.