7 Things Everyone Should Consider to Enhance Website UX
So there is a lot of talk around website UX (meaning user experience), and it has almost become an annoying buzzword people throw at you when chatting about website design. And what I mean by annoying is that there is a lot of talk around UX but only a few concrete ideas on how to actually improve user experience. Well, this article is focused on presenting solutions rather than outlining problems so let’s get to it.
For you who always just want the list promoted in the headline - here you go. And for those who want to understand a bit deeper what I mean with each of these points; please enjoy the ride and scroll further down.
- Use white space
- Optimise page speed
- Add engaging elements
- Invest time in quality copy
- Include clear CTAs
- Provide personalized assistance
- Be mobile-friendly
1. Use white space
There is no bigger enemy to a good user experience than a cluttered website. It’s hard to find the information you are looking for and you easily get distracted. If you don’t find what you are looking for you get annoyed. A distracted user is likely to drop off from the buyer's journey.
Adding enough white (or whatever background colour you prefer) space on your page makes it easier for visitors to breathe and focus on the most important things with which you try to convince the visitor. Breaks also add important rhythm to the content – they work in the same way as in speeches and presentations.
2. Optimize page speed
Ever left a website because it didn’t load at all or because it was dead slow? That’s what I thought. It is vital to make sure your page loads as quickly as possible and there are several tricks for this. How quick should it be? Well according to Neil Patel 47% of visitors expect the page to load in less than two seconds. There are several ways to speed up your website and this article from CrazyEgg is a good place to start. To improve your website, you shouldn’t only focus on the speed but its actual UX. You can do this by using web usability testing to uncover the issues you can work on.
3. Add engaging elements
People want to be engaged. Activating your website visitors gets them to interact with your website, and thus makes them feel more involved in the process of finding what they are looking for in a positive manner. Use tools like polls, questionnaires, chatbots and other types of interactive content to get people engaged. The more you engage people the more likely they are to convert themselves and to return to your website. Especially if you are a brand that wants to engage and interact with people offline you should do the same thing online.
4. Invest time in quality copy
Good copy wins hearts, poor copy loses hair. The value of quality copy is irreplaceable. Poor copy makes even the most interesting products or services look bad whereas a vibrant and smooth copy turns on the heat.
This quote from Gary Halbert about the importance of good copy guides us to my next point: including clear CTAs on your site.
“What I am doing here is taking the reader by the hand and leading him exactly where I want him to go. It seems like a small point and, maybe it is, but is the little touches like this that keeps the letter flowing, the reader moving along, and, it relieves him of the burden of trying to figure out what he is supposed to do when he finishes reading a particular page.”
5. Include clear CTAs
CTAs are included so that the readers know what to do next and what kind of action is expected from them. A good rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t have more than one CTA per screen – otherwise your visitors will get confused.
What I mean by “clear” in this case is that the CTAs should always stand out from the page so that they don’t go unnoticed, and that the CTA implicates where the visitor ends up after clicking.
6. Provide personalized assistance
We all want to feel special. I’m pretty sure you have at least one or two outstanding customer experiences in mind from the offline world. Whether it was that barista who served your morning takeaway coffee with a big smile or the salesperson who helped you in choosing the shoes you couldn’t live without. But it’s funny that even though we all know this, only a handful of companies offer personalized assistance online.
A few years back the only way to execute personalized assistance online was to use those annoying bottom right-hand-corner pop-up chats that were expensive to maintain as someone needed to be online all the time. Luckily nowadays there are better options. Algorithms are getting better at offering recommendations based on your visitor history, chats can be had within the content, and chatbots can assist visitors 24/7/365.
7. Be mobile-friendly
This one shouldn’t be in this list, to be honest. For some this is old news, but amazingly many companies still ignore the fact that over 52% of all website traffic is from mobile devices. You can't afford to focus only on desktop because an increasing number of visitors will be there on mobile. And for those users great UX is especially important.
SUMMARY
Most people think the hardest part of fixing your website UX is to know where to start. I hope that this article helps you answer that question. But I would like to note that actually the most crucial thing in improving your website CX is to just start doing it.
