User experience is the sustaining element of every high-quality website. It is one of the crucial factors that determine your conversion rate while helping you keep the bounce/exit rate at bay. More and more entrepreneurs focus on improving the user experience for their websites to stay competitive in the marketplace. The user-centric design ensures that your website is easy and enjoyable to use, bringing new prospects to your brand.
What Is User Experience?
User experience (UX) includes all emotions, impressions, preferences, and physical and psychological reactions of the user that occur before, during, and after using the interface. User experience as a field in web design focuses on having a deep awareness of users’ needs, values, abilities, and limitations.
The Differences Between Usability and User Experience
Both usability and user experience are necessary for your website’s success. But there is a difference between these two terms. Usability is predominantly about the functional side of the product and making it easy to use and intuitive, while user experience is about creating an emotional connection between the user and the product, thereby making the user’s task meaningful and fulfilling.
Needless to say, the product should be as simple as possible to use, and it should allow your prospects and customers to achieve their goals. But we should also keep in mind that users expect the process to be pleasant and fun. The essence of UX is improving the experience of interacting with the product so that customers find value in it.
Now, in understanding the differences between these two notions, it is vital to acknowledge that they are both equally important for creating a truly successful interface.
Why Does User Experience Matter?
User experience is essential not only because it is aimed at fulfilling the user’s needs. While providing positive experiences that keep users loyal to the brand, UX also heeds to the business goals and objectives of the company. Meaningful user experience allows you to analyze customer journeys and optimize them to your business success.
User experience improvement is a fundamental and decisive factor in the battle against competitors. Between two online trading platforms with approximately equal product lists, prices, and client services, the client will choose the one with better user experience.
How to Ensure the Best UX For Your Website
Creating an upscale website with exceptional UX will make you feel confident in the face of growing competition. Your site definitely has a strong UX if visitors face no difficulties when navigating your website and using its features, while also enjoying the process.
To understand your site’s weaknesses, ask yourself a few questions:
- Is it immediately clear from your website what your company is doing and what it offers?
- How easy is it to find the information you need?
- What emotions does the website’s design trigger?
- How easy is it for customers to contact you or order your product or service via the website?
Improving a website’s UX is not at all difficult if you clearly understand the purpose and if you study user behavior. Sometimes, small changes in UX have a huge impact on user behaviors and conversion rates.
Here are some tips that you can use to improve the UX of your website.
Tip #1. Speed up your website.
Low speed kills your conversions.
No matter how impressive the brand is, 40% of visitors will abandon a page that takes three or more seconds to load. And most users expect websites to load in less than two seconds.
There could be a few reasons why your website takes more time to load. It could be server load time or the number of redirects you have.
Sometimes, the speed of a content-heavy website is low due to a large number of elements: images, video files, animations. To reduce the load time of a page, you can use lazy load image plugins that allow the page to load images sequentially as the user scrolls down. The best free lazy load plugins are a3 Lazy Load, Speed Up – Lazy Load, Lazy Load WP Rocket, and BJ Lazy Load.
You can test your page loading speed using a free service from Google.
Tip #2. Improve the mobile version of your website.
Nowadays, no one wants to be bound to a computer, especially the millennial generation. If your business website has only a desktop version, you are losing a critical mass of target customers who are used to solving their tasks with a smartphone. According to Google research, 72% of users prefer the mobile version of sites, and more than 60% use the mobile Internet.
Tip #3. Use a consistent design.
A website design should have a clear, logical structure. It is very important that all its elements serve a single idea, ensuring a smooth presentation of content. Every detail matters, starting with the font size, color selection, and intervals, and ending with the style and color of design elements, illustrations, etc. All this combined together should make up a complete, harmonious picture. The consistency of all elements will allow users to seamlessly navigate through different site areas and experience an exciting user journey.
A design that is clean and easy to read is what today’s users want and demand. Video, animation, motion design, and other trendy bells and whistles can be a great addition as long as you don’t overdo it. The minimalist design positively affects the loading speed of your pages – and it’s a trend!
Tip #4. Check your security certificate.
Having a security certificate is a great way to gain your customers’ trust.
A security certificate is used to provide the safety of personal data transmission to visitors, Internet service providers (ISPs), and web servers. It is also called a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate.
When potential customers feel safe on your website, they are not afraid to share their personal information, and this increases the number of visits and conversions.
A security certificate requires regular updates, either annual or even more frequent.
If a security certificate expires, a visitor will see a corresponding notification in his browser, saying that the user is visiting the website at their own risk. To prevent this from happening, make sure your security certificates are updated regularly.
Tip #5. Don’t hide your contacts.
64% of visitors want to see the company’s contacts on the homepage, and 44% will leave a brand’s website if there’s no phone number or contact information. (Blue Corona)
Quick access to your company’s contacts directly affects the number of leads generated by your website. It also makes your brand look accessible and trustworthy.
But where is the best place to put your contact info? Well, you have several options:
- A ‘Contact us’ tab in the main navigation (usually as the last item)
- As a sub-navigation level of the ‘About us’ tab
- In the footer (your email and phone number or a link to the ‘Contact us’ page)
- On product pages (unless you run a 100% online business)
- In your Support area.
Some brands have the best luck putting their contact info in the top right corner of the page, ensuring its maximum visibility – they experienced a 54% upsurge in phone calls. But you can always put your contacts in a different location.
You can also try experimenting with different locations for your contact information. And after running A/B tests to compare them against one another, you will find the optimal solution that will maximize your conversions.
Tip #6. Don’t neglect tests.
By testing UX, you determine the best way for your website to reach out to your audience. User experience tests also help identify weak spots and improve them.
For example, A/B testing mentioned above is a range of comparison/preference tests carried out to establish two or more alternatives, for example, two design layouts. Consistent A/B tests at the design phase can promptly indicate which option works best.
You can also run these tests to identify users’ first impression from visiting your site, their level of trust, time on page, and more. By conducting A/B tests, you can measure users’ gut reactions, confidence, credibility, the time required to complete various tasks, etc. Analyzing test results will help you make sure your UX is in line with the audience’s expectations and preferences.
Online testing tools like ClickHeat, Crazy Egg, Optimizely, Qualaroo, and Five second tests are available for usability tests.
Boost Your Conversions With UX Optimization!
Optimizing user experience is an excellent way to improve your conversion rate. Concentrating on UX optimization, you are also showing your prospects and customers that their needs are your company’s first priority. The acute awareness of your audience preferences and tips from this article will help you create an exceptional UX for your users, and will take your business one step closer to success.