User experience (UX) has a tremendous effect on the results you get from your website. In fact, the way you present your products and services along with the overall user-friendliness, attractiveness, and professionalism of your site is just as important as what you’re selling. In this article, we’ll be exploring the various aspects of UX, why it’s so crucial to your success and some guidelines on how to create the best possible user experience for your visitors and customers.
Here is a great video on immersive UX…
What is UX?
UX (User Experience) is the sum total of all the factors connected to your website’s appearance and functionality, including:
- The overall look and design of the site. Fonts, colours, images, layout, and anything else that catches the eye.
- Page loading time. If pages take too long to load, many visitors will leave.
- Navigation. Visitors should be able to find what they’re looking for and easily get from one page to another.
- Relevance. How closely does your site’s content match users’ expectations?
- Personalization. Personalization can help to deliver a better experience. For example, visitors may see certain offers based on their location, past behaviour on the site, or what ad or link they clicked on to reach the site.
Why is UX so Important?
When people react to the design and navigation of your website, it’s not usually a conscious reaction (unless the visitor is a marketer or web designer). However, many elements affect how someone feels about a site. This, in turn, often determines how much time they spend there and whether or not they take actions such as buying something or opting into a mailing list.
Poor UX can completely undermine even the best products. It’s similar to walking into a physical store. If you hard to find the right department or seeing items scattered randomly on shelves, you probably won’t spend much time (or money) there. On the other hand, a store with an attractive design and where it’s easy to find what you’re looking for puts you more into a shopping mood.
In a way, UX on a website is even more important than design in a brick and mortar business. If you get frustrated in a store, you might wander around a little and run into what you’re seeking. You might ask a sales associate for help. On a website, however, it only takes a second to click away. In the digital world, you only have a few seconds to make a positive impression. Here are some statistics that illustrate the importance of UX.
- Google reports that 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. While mobile users might be slightly more impatient than computer users, the same principle holds true for all websites.
- Adobe found that 59% of users prefer a site that’s beautifully designed over one that’s plain and simple. This is an important number as it reveals that you need a balance between usability and attractiveness. A very simple design might provide easy navigation but it might bore and disappoint your visitors.
- As Inc reports, 44% of visitors will leave a site that doesn’t have contact information.
- UX applies to every element on a website, including forms (such as forms needed to register for a site or opt-in). Demanding too much information reduces UX. Expedia found that removing a single data field from a form increased their income by $12 million.
- According to an article published in Customer Experience Update, by 2020, UX will be more important than price or product quality as the key brand differentiator. This is rather incredible when you think about it and something you really need to carefully consider. It implies that people actually care more about their experience on your website than what you’re selling!
- UX is good for SEO. If pleasing your customers isn’t enough, Google also looks closely at UX factors such as site-loading speed, user-friendly design, and relevant content. When you improve the user experience you’re boosting your site’s SEO as well as boosting your chances for more leads and conversions.
Key Elements of UX
Now let’s look at some of the most important elements of UX that visitors, whether they know it or not, care most about when they land on your site.
Create Smooth and Intuitive Navigation
When it comes to UX, navigation is fundamental. Visitors must be able to quickly find what they’re looking for.
- Have a clear hierarchy. The hierarchy refers to the categories and subcategories of a menu. Consider the popular online shoe store Zappos. There are menus for Men’s, Women’s, and Children’s shoes. Under each of these, there are subcategories such as Boots, Oxfords, Sandals, etc. Since the site sells so many products, it’s crucial that customers can narrow down their search. The same goes for every website, even if yours isn’t quite as large.
- Accurate names and logical ordering. Give your products and services precise names that are familiar to your customers. Don’t use industry jargon if your customers are using more popular terms. Additionally, list the most popular items first on menus.
- Make use of breadcrumbs. In old fairy tales, children leave a trail of breadcrumbs so they can find their way home. In website design, breadcrumbs have a similar purpose. They prevent visitors from getting lost by making it easy to return to the home or other higher level page. Smaller sites may not need breadcrumbs as this is for sites large enough that visitors can lose their way.
Display Your Products in an Appealing Way
The fact is, your real goal isn’t to create a beautiful website. That’s merely a means to an end. Your aim is to win customers over, not to win a design award. So everything you do needs to contribute to this goal. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Does your site provide the look and information that makes it easy for him or her to make an informed decision?
- Provide a variety of photos showing products from different angles or in different environments. The fashion brand Net-a-Porter is a good place to look for examples of this. They display their items from various angles and situations.
- Avoid clutter. Give people accurate descriptions but don’t overwhelm them with text.
- Display your products in context. When possible, show your products in the environment that your customer will be using them. For example, I made a videocomparing different approaches to selling tiles online. Notice that in the first few examples, the tiles are shown on their own, out of context. In the final example, Southern Cross Ceramics, visitors can use the site’s visualiser to see how tiles will actually look on walls. That’s why fashion brands such as Verge Girl typically display models wearing clothing and accessories and why food and recipe sites such as Epicurious show mouth-watering dishes that make you hungry.
Educate Customers About Your Services
Not every business sells physical products that can be displayed or worn. When it comes to services and educational products, your challenge is to educate your audience and clearly explain the benefits you offer.
- Make information easy to find. Just as e-commerce sites and anyone selling physical products needs to make it easy for customers to navigate the products, service providers need to do the same. Consider the clean design of Acurve, where you see a full list of services under the two headings Full Lifestyle Services and Technologies.
- Highlight benefits and social proof. Achievers is a company dedicated to increasing employee engagement. Their site emphasizes results such as statistics for client retention and member satisfaction.
- Images are important for services as well as physical products. Take a look at William Pitt and Julia B. Fee Sotheby’s International Realty website, which won a design award from Webawards in 2016. The site combines beautiful photography of properties, a clear navigation menu and hard numbers such as units sold, median sales price, and average days on the market.
- For some industries, such as financial services, there really aren’t any physical products to display. In this case, the emphasis should be on providing relevant information. However, design and appealing visuals are still important. See how Credit Karma, a company that provides free credit scores and other services, places key numbers and information in simple yet attractive icons and infographics.
The Importance of Mobile UX
Mobile devices now account for approximately half of all website traffic. As smartphones and tablets get more popular, we can expect mobile traffic to grow even faster in the coming years. This means that mobile-friendliness is a crucial aspect of web design. Here are a few of the most important aspects of mobile UX.
- Use a single-column layout, which is easier for mobile users to navigate than multi-columns.
- Avoid clutter. This is a good overall UX principle but especially relevant for mobile users who are working with small screens.
- Create CTA and other buttons large enough for mobile users to easily tap on. Keep in mind that text links are much harder to tap on smartphones than buttons.
- Keep forms short and simple. The more information you ask for on a form, the more typing your mobile users (as well as everyone else) have to do.
Test Results and Get User Feedback
If you want to truly understand how people feel about your website you have to track your results. It also helps to actively seek feedback.
Metrics to Watch
- Watch your bounce rate. One of the most important stats related to UX is your bounce rate. A bounce is when someone visits one of your pages and leaves without taking any further action. There can be many reasons for a high bounce rate. However, if you’re having trouble retaining your visitors, you should look at your design and UX.
- Measure RVR. Return Visitor Rate (RVR) is another crucial metric that’s strongly impacted by UX. People returning to your site indicates that they’re finding value there. Google Analytics and other analytics software make it easy to differentiate between unique and returning visitors. When you have a business site, of course, you want to work on attracting both new and returning visitors.
- Customer satisfaction. Polls and surveys are another way to learn what your visitors think of your site. Keep these short so you don’t bore your audience. For some questions, a simple “yes” or “no” (or thumbs-up/thumbs-down) is all you need. For more complex questions, a scale, such as “On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you like this feature?” is preferable. There are also visual scales such as a smiley face vs. a frown.
Encourage Feedback
You can improve UX in many ways, such as by studying design trends and tracking metrics. However, you shouldn’t overlook one of the most direct methods -listen to your visitors. Some people will tell you what they like and don’t like about your site. If you want to get a useful amount of feedback, however, you need to actively seek it. Don’t be afraid to ask for comments and opinions. You can simply make casual requests for feedback in emails and on your blog and website pages. Ask, for instance, “What do you think of our new design? Please comment!” with a link to a contact form or email.
Reviews
Customer reviews can tell you a lot about your site’s UX. At the same time, positive reviews can be used to enhance UX. Prominently displayed reviews and testimonials provide strong social proof for your business. Make sure you’re listed on all relevant review sites such as Google, Yelp, Facebook, and any industry-specific sites where people review your type of business (e.g. there are review sites for restaurants, travel companies, contractors, lawyers, and other industries). Encourage your customers to leave reviews and pay close attention to what they tell you!
Customer Support and UX
Customer support and UX are usually discussed separately but they are actually closely connected. In fact, solid customer support is arguably an aspect of UX as it directly affects visitors’ experience.
Both chatbots and live chat are features that help users navigate your site. A chatbot can answer common questions and guide visitors to the right page or product. Live chat agents can do even more by answering questions in real time. Other support options, such as contact forms, social media, and phone support also help users resolve any issues.
At the same time, you don’t want to use customer support to compensate for easily fixable UX problems. For example, if your navigation menu is confusing and people use your chatbot to find something, you’re still probably losing traffic and annoying people who would rather just find what they’re looking for on their own.
Upgrading UX lessens the load on any type of non-automated customer support. Simply put, the more user-friendly your site is, the less help people will need. This, of course, refers to matters such as finding products and navigating a website; post-purchase issues are another category.
Make UX Part of Your Mission
UX is not something you figure out once but an ongoing process. Your business evolves, customers’ preferences change, new technologies appear. Your commitment to user experience, however, should remain consistent. It’s essential to constantly monitor your site, track your results, monitor the competition, and keep up with the latest design and website trends.
It’s important to understand concepts like UX and see how they impact your industry. What really counts, though, is how you can apply these principles to your own website. The first step is to identify areas where you may need to make some changes. KND Digital will provide you with a free website analysis so we can advise you on ways to improve UX and conversions.
We’re a full-service digital agency in Brisbane and can help you with every aspect of web design. To learn more about our services, contact us.