Your website is the brand’s face. How you design the web pages can encourage users to stay around the website or simply leave and never come back. Today’s online users are savvy about design and expect a site they visit to have a certain degree of sophistication.
What’s UX Design?
UX or user experience design refers to increasing the website users’ overall satisfaction by improving the accessibility, efficiency, and usability of the users’ interaction with the website. UX design aims to make a website straightforward to use rather than a one confusing users.
Good UX design makes navigation easy and lets users know what to do when they land on your site.
How To Improve Your Website’s UX Design
1. Research the User
Before designing (or re-designing) a website, start by asking yourself who is it for? Here are some of the aspects to help you understand the user better and create a design that meets their needs:
- Demographics – What is their gender, age bracket, and profession? Are they women between 18 and 24 years or men and women above 40 years? Are they parents, students, or professionals?
- The services or products they’re already using – What reviews on social media do they leave for such services and products? How do the providers respond, and is there something you can do better?
- Interests – What are their hobbies? Is it music, traveling, or gaming
Use statistics, polling, surveys, and Google to learn about the target audience and their needs. Once you understand the user, reflect it in the design. If you ever struggle to uncover relevant and actionable insights, you should consider hiring a UX agency to help you do the job right.
2. Keep It Simple
When it comes to the website layout, simplicity is the real deal. In addition, simplicity means removing unnecessary elements from the design.
When someone visits a website, you want them to take a particular action. For that to happen, the visitors will scan the content on a page. If they have to go through a maze to find what they are looking for, they won’t stay around.
Here’s what simplicity means:
- Each page should have a single goal. For instance, the checkout page should only feature the buttons customers should click when checking out. If they have to fill out a form, basic contact information is enough, such as name and email.
- Make the intent of every page and item clear: the user shouldn’t second-guess here. For example, navigational elements should be distinct and visible.
- Put additional but not-so-relevant data at the bottom of the page. For instance, recent posts or “you might also like” should be right at the bottom.
If you find yourself struggling to create a design that looks good and can’t afford a web designer, you may want to consider using a web design platform that has hundreds of pre-designed pages to choose from created by professional designers.
3. Make the Website Mobile-Friendly
Mobile-friendliness is one of the leading UX design trends that won’t fade anytime soon as many people access the web through mobile devices.
More than 50% of the total internet traffic originates from mobile devices.
Therefore, visitors are five times more likely to exit if your site isn’t optimized for mobile.
So, if you aren’t optimizing your site for mobile, you’re locking out many prospects.
But wait, there’s more. A mobile-friendly website isn’t just good for users; it’s suitable for search engines too.
Here’s why: Google uses the website content’s mobile version for indexing and ranking – the reason is most users access Google Search from mobile devices. And now, a smartphone Googlebot crawls websites in a bid to index pages.
How do you know your site is mobile-friendly?
Elements of a Mobile-Friendly Website
Fast Loading
If a mobile site won’t load within three seconds, the bounce rate increases by 32%.
It’s vital to minimize the loading time to navigate the website easily and quickly.
How do you reduce loading time? Here are some tips:
- Choose a performance-focused hosting solution
- Compress images
- Minimize redirects
- Cache web pages using a plugin like W3 Total Cache
- Deactivate and delete unnecessary plugins to eliminate unnecessary bloat
- Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML code using a free plugin like Autoptimize
Easy Navigation
Looking for something on smaller screens can be difficult. If visitors have to Zoom in to find what they want, they’ll get tired and leave. Help visitors locate what they need by simplifying the menu and keeping everything simple, so people don’t have to Zoom in to read text.
Besides, use responsive page builders like Elementor or Brizy to see how pages appear on different screen sizes before publishing them.
Easy to Take Action
The website should be designed to make it easy and quick for visitors to perform tasks like making a purchase, contacting you, or performing a product search. It’s best to reduce the number of steps needed to complete a transaction or form.
4. Provide Engaging Content
These days, web visitors are looking for something past the purchase; an experience. An effective way to give them a breathtaking experience is by embracing an engaging content strategy.
An effective content strategy focuses on telling the brand’s story to connect the business and the customer.
You can use content in any format, such as a vlog, blog post, or even a different site. Using content to create a brand identity lets potential customers know more about who they’re buying from.
Plus, using visual content on your website can be an effective way to attract your customers’ attention. Make your content more noticeable with professional-looking screenshots, illustrations, and images (plenty of software will do this for you out there).
Don’t underestimate the power of video content, as it proves to be one of the most successful forms of content marketing. Focus on creating various types of videos like case studies, customer video testimonials, and product videos that can be helpful to improve your website’s UX design.
Validate your concepts for performance during the design stage with AI-generated attention analytics
5. Add Plenty of White Space
White space plays a significant role in design. Specifically, white space enhances readability. Even including white space in minute amounts gives your design a polished look.
The background color shouldn’t always be white. What matters is the space between elements on the website.
You can use colors that attract the users’ attention to create a good contrast between the background and text. Let the brand colors guide you.
Here are helpful tips on how to use white space to enhance your site’s UX design:
- Increase the line space for content on your web pages
- Don’t put images inline with text. Instead, position them above or below text blocks.
- Include white space when grouping related objects
Final Word
An effective UX design works for users and your platform. A well-executed user experience leads users to the resources or data they need while eliminating unnecessary distractions.
As website owners, we should construct an intuitive interface that drives engagement. To make users access, use, and experience our content, we should make website interfaces more navigable.
Do an audit of your website to determine if it offers the desired user experience. Use the tips above to optimize your pages to lower the bounce rate and increase sales.