In today's ever-growing digital landscape, your website is a powerful tool that you can use to leverage your brand. It acts as your 24/7 salesman, it can be your most powerful business asset, and it can be the very core of your marketing efforts.
But along with it, digital marketing trends are rapidly changing as well. What used to be "in trend" now could be outdated just several months later.
How important is user experience?
User experience on a website is crucial because it helps fulfill a user's needs. Its main goals are to provide a positive experience so that people remain loyal to the product and brand.
It also aims to create more meaningful experiences letting you define a customer's journey that is highly conductive for your business' success.
In this post, we've put together some smart design tips for more better user experience.
1. Design for your users
Once you already have your target audience, come up with a design that speaks to a particular group or demographic. When it comes to the layout choices and the design, base these preferences on target audiences who most commonly visit your site.
The colors that you pick for your design should also match the color palette of your brand, and should work well with its surrounding features. Ideally, you need to match your target audience's preferences with your existing brand styling.
If you're a brand that only used muted colors, and want to reach out to a target demographic who loves more vibrant colors, then you have to find a middle ground ? the one that reflects the preferences of your audience without having to sacrifice your own styling.
There should also be a contrast with your background and design for easy viewing especially for users that are accessing your site on smaller screens, or have visual impairments.
2. Improve loading time
One of the most frustrating online experiences of users is waiting for a page that takes too long to load.
Because of the rise of mobile devices, people from all around the world can access your site using various platforms. If your site doesn't load in the first few seconds, then chances are, users will usually bounce.
A slow page loading time will interrupt the user's overall experience and can be frustrating to those who don't have the time to wait. So how do you improve your page loading speed?
Start by compressing your images before they load on your site. The file size of an image is one of the primary reasons you have a slow loading site.
Google also gives you a free service that lets you analyze and optimize your site by using PageSpeed tools. That way, you can get more information about your page speed. Moreover, it also gives you a couple of suggestions on how you can enhance your load time on your desktop and mobile.
3. Make your site responsive
A lot of people have their noses on mobile phones these days. That's why you have to ensure that you have a mobile-friendly site that's easy to navigate no matter what kind of device users use to access it.
Also, keep in mind that Google is starting to penalize sites that aren't highly optimized for mobile devices. That's why the need to have a mobile-responsive site is becoming crucial. This is probably one of the best ways you can improve the usability of your site.
If you're not quite sure how mobile-friendly your site is, use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test.
4. Simplify your navigation
Users should have a clear sense of your navigation. Staying too far from the norm, and they'll grow more and more aggravated and bounce away from your site.
Go for an intuitive layout that will let visitors know where the key features are, making your website more accessible. Most people are used to see a certain order on a website's layout, like the home button in the leftmost spot of your navigation bar.
Also, ensure that you simplify the entire navigation process of your site. If users find it too complicated, then they'll likely leave and never return.
Make your site's navigational structure as simple as possible. That way, users can browse your site with very little hassle.
5. Make your site interactive
Making your site more interactive makes sure that users will keep browsing your site with a possibility of coming back in the future.
There are various types of interactive content. For instance, you can make your site's texts and images slightly interact with your user's mouse. Also, when a user hovers right through an item on the menu, the text gradually changes its color.
You can also tap into more creative options, such as visual storytelling, to drive user interaction. It helps tap into users' emotions, allowing them to be part of the narrative of your site. You can also make your website stand out by using great photos.
When you allow users to participate more in the content that they read, you're improving user engagement, giving them more time to spend on your website.
6. Have enough whitespace
One of the most common mistakes a lot of site owners commit is filling their site with as much information as possible, then fearing that there are too many "white spaces" on their site.
But the thing is, those white spaces are actually good. They are crucial because it's one of the few things that make your text look more visually appealing. They give your content more breathing space.
In fact, more white spaces around headings and titles can boost the user's attention. It also gives your site a more fresh, clean, and modern look. A lot of good web designers out there perfectly understands this concept.
Over to You
When you give web users an excellent user experience, not only will you improve your business' profitability, you're also making your target audiences' lives much easier. Their interactions with your brand are as simple and intuitive as possible.
Also, if your site can help users solve their problems and complete tasks then, they'll be more than happy to talk about your brand with others.