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People expect websites to be intuitive, visually appealing, accessible, and fast-loading. Yet it's easy to miss out on these and, as a result, fail to deliver a positive user experience. Fortunately, you can easily improve user experience on your site with some simple practices and climb your way up the conversion ladder.
From simple design changes to more complex strategies, we will discuss the 8 ways to enhance your site's usability. By the end, you’ll know how to create a website that users love to navigate and interact with. You’ll attract and retain more visitors and convert them into loyal customers.
So, let’s get started.
User experience determines how well people will perceive and interact with your brand.
Imagine landing on a website that’s cluttered, confusing, and takes ages to load, it’s frustrating, right? By keeping these factors in mind, you can make your user’s experience a lot smoother and more enjoyable and, in turn, encourage people to stay longer on your site.
Think about your site like it's a storefront on a busy street. Just as a physical storefront needs to be clean, organized, and attractive to draw in customers, your website needs to be easy to navigate and visually appealing to attract people.
Here are the 4 main benefits of improving user experience on your site:
Now, let's explore how you can turn your website around by developing your site with user experience in mind. Your site is just some steps away from being a more engaging, attractive site that people will love to use and interact with.
When it comes to user experience, you want to put your user at the forefront. This means that your site should be made easy in all aspects - navigation, purchasing, and finding information. Follow these 8 tried-and-proven strategies to make your site one that customers enjoy and can keep coming back to.
White space is the empty space you see around design elements on a site. Essentially, it helps to create a clean and visually appealing design by making your content seem less cluttered and overwhelming for your users.
It doesn't even have to look boring. You can use it to draw attention to the most critical elements of your site like CTA’s, important messages, and headlines. For instance, take a look at Luxurymodo’s website. They’ve leveraged white spaces to draw user attention to the destinations they feature.
Remember to take your overall design when considering whitespace. It should work together with other elements, like typography, color, and imagery, to create a cohesive and visually appealing layout.
Don’t be afraid to use color, either. Consider using light shades of gray or other pastel shades to create a similar effect.
When users visit your website, they want to find what they’re looking for immediately. Your navigation encompasses everything from your menus, links, and buttons that users interact with to move around your site. If it’s too complicated, users will get frustrated and leave the site.
So, how can you simplify your navigation and, in turn, improve bad user experience?
Consider keeping everything straightforward, including your menus and buttons. The last thing you want to do is to confuse your readers, so avoid using complicated terminology or industry jargon. The labels on your site should also be clear and descriptive so people know exactly where to click.
To make your navigation more intuitive, group related items together. This applies if you have multiple categories of products. You can create a drop-down menu that lists all of the categories in one place. You don’t want to overwhelm your readers either, so limit the number of items in your menu to the most important pages of your website.
With the help of visual cues, like icons or arrows, you make your navigation more intuitive. For example, you could use an icon of a shopping cart to indicate your eCommerce section.
An excellent example of a website that has simple and clear navigation is CleaningBusinessAcademy. The main menu at the top of the page is straightforward with only 5 options that cover the main areas of the website, so it’s easier for anyone looking for information to start a cleaning business.
Plus, when you dive deeper into their website, you’ll find that it's easier to find the relevant content you’re looking for, with all of their cleaning tips under one main page. Their use of white space, clear typography, and minimal design also help people quickly find cleaning posts they're interested in.
Accessibility means making sure that everyone can easily navigate and enjoy your website regardless of their limitations or preferences. Users will have different needs when accessing your content.
For instance, users with visual impairments may require screen readers or magnifiers to browse through the website, while those with mobility impairments may rely on keyboard shortcuts to navigate around the site.
Either way, ensuring that your site is accessible will make it a welcoming place for all users and, in turn, increase your page’s conversions and engagements.
Some essential elements that can improve accessibility on your website include:
Implement these features to improve your site’s accessibility and make it more user-friendly. This way, you can also reach a wider audience and improve your overall online presence. You can also leverage Google PageSpeed report. It features an accessibility score to help you identify areas you can improve on.
With more and more people relying on their mobile devices and tablets for internet browsing, responsive design is needed to stay ahead in today’s digital landscape.
A responsive or user-centered design allows your site to adapt to different screen sizes, regardless of whatever device users are browsing from.
But how do you ensure your responsive design provides the best possible user experience?
As mentioned before, a simple design will help your website appear less cluttered and, in turn, help online visitors navigate easily, regardless of any type of device they use. Determine which elements are most needed by your users and prioritize them for smaller screens.
Although this may require you to make some adjustments to the layout and remove non-essential elements to maintain a clean and focused design, you should strike a balance between providing enough information and avoiding clutter.
Also, consider using collapsible menus, hamburger icons, or other mobile-friendly navigation techniques to save space on smaller screens.
Essentially, your website’s typography should also be easy to read and large enough for mobile devices. Staying updated on these latest trends and considerations will help you improve your user experience and make sure your website is engaging on all devices.
No one likes waiting around for a site to load. Slow loading times frustrate users and cause higher bounce rates. 41% of internet users expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. If your website fails to meet users' expectations for application fast load times, it will harm the user journey, retention, and revenue.
To make sure your page loads fast, minimize your HTTP requests. Each element on your page, including images, scripts, and stylesheets, requires an HTTP request to load. Minimizing the number of HTTP requests will speed up load time. Combining multiple CSS and Javascript into one can also help you reduce the number of requests. Watch this video to get a comprehensive list of techniques you can apply.
Moreover, consider using a content delivery network (CDN). It distributes your website's content across a network of servers, so users can access it from a server that's geographically closer to them. This can decrease the distance that data needs to travel, which will help your site load faster.
Your calls-to-action (CTA) is the gateway to conversions on your website. They can make or break the user experience and ultimately determine the success of your website. Essentially, CTAs are the buttons or links that encourage users to take a specific action, like purchasing or signing up for a newsletter.
An excellent example you can look at is how the website Going.com created a clear and compelling CTA.
Overall, the website Going has a well-thought CTA that you can take inspiration from. Remember that the ultimate goal of a CTA is to encourage users to take a specific action, such as creating an account and purchasing.
This goes for blog pages too. On Going’s how to find cheap flights guide, while they had some CTA sprinkled throughout the content, they had the header as a sticky, so there’s always a CTA no matter where they are on the page.
Hence use action-oriented language and create a sense of urgency. Action buttons like "Limited time offer" or "Only a few spots left," for instance, can create a sense of urgency and prompt users to act quickly. While phrases like "Sign up now" or "Join the community" are more effective than more passive phrases like "Learn more" or "View details”.
A well-designed website can make all the difference in how users perceive and interact with your brand and can even impact factors like bounce rate and time spent on site.
Fortunately, it’s not that hard to design a site that provides a positive experience - factors like keeping it simple, using consistent branding, and high-quality images can help you improve your site’s design.
Consistent design in your branding is also key. When you use the same color scheme, logo, and typography throughout your website, you reinforce your brand identity and make your website more recognizable to people. At the same time, adding high-quality images to your site can help to break up text and make your site easier to read.
Overall, a well-designed site is easy on the eyes and engaging. It’s simple, has a clear CTA, and gives your brand its name while providing a positive customer journey. If you can easily interact with a website with little to no distractions, you’ve found a well-designed site.
Improving the user experience on your site is not a one-and-done time of a task. It’s an ongoing process that requires regular attention and updates. Moreover, as technology evolves and user behaviors change, you will need to continually adapt your website to make sure it’s user-friendly and meets your audience’s needs.
Hence, regularly test different aspects of your site (design, layouts, and features) and analyze how users respond to them. Ultimately, this proactive approach will help you to identify what’s working well and ensure your visitors will return to your site again and again. Here are tools you can use.
Don't forget to analyze user behavior. Essentially, data integration platforms like Airbyte and Fivetran can help make this process easier and more efficient. You can also leverage Google Analytics to track user behavior, including ( how long they stay on your website and which pages they visit) to help you find areas for improvement.
Enhancing the user experience on your site is like unlocking a treasure trove of customer attraction. With the 8 strategies laid out in this article, you'll craft a user-friendly website that caters to your customers' every whim.
Remember to keep your users in mind throughout the process because they will be the ones who will determine your website’s success. So, gather feedback, listen to their suggestions, and address any pain points they encounter. By Understanding their needs and desires, you can fine-tune and polish the user experience to perfection.
This is an exclusive guest article written for NitroPack.
Burkhard Berger is the founder of Novum™. He helps innovative B2B companies implement revenue-driven SEO strategies to scale their organic traffic to 1,000,000+ visitors per month. Curious about what your true traffic potential is?
Lora has spent the last 8 years developing content strategies that drive better user experiences for SaaS companies in the CEE region. In collaboration with WordPress subject-matter experts and the 2024 Web Almanac, she helps site owners close the gap between web performance optimization and real-life business results.
