So you have a website, or at least you work for someone or something that has a website. Great! You must have something to say or offer, otherwise what’s the point? user experience
If you own a website for no reason whatsoever please turn off your computer, tablet and/or mobile now… it’s not for you!
If, as I suspect, you or your employer has a voice to express with thoughtful guidance and support to offer, then maybe we can help.
The aim of your website should be to express the voice of your brand to your target audience both clearly and accurately. You need to make your site smoother than Barry White in silk pyjamas so the user can’t get enough of you and your brand.
In this post we discuss six tips to create an awesome user experience.
#Listen
Sounds obvious because it is.
The first of our tips for creating an awesome user experience is to make sure you are constantly listening to your audience. User needs change and evolve over time so to make sure you’re keeping up you need to be listening. This can be done in many ways such as on-site feedback widgets, email surveys or call campaigns, but one of the easiest ways is to monitor your Google Analytics account.
We recommend spending a few hours a week looking at how your audience use your top pages. You need to be listening for and reacting to the following points:
- How long people spend on your pages
- Where they go next
- Which page elements they are clicking on
- Where users exit your site
- Number of pages per session
#Improve your site
People can access the internet from just about everywhere these days … and they do! In fact, I’m sitting in a tree right now.
Think of all those extra searches and all those pages people see. Some will be awful, some just mediocre and some will be amazing! To make sure you are offering your target audience the user experience they’ve come to expect online you need to in the later ‘amazing’ category.
The good news, it isn’t all that difficult to do. Firstly make sure your site is responsive. It’s so frustrating when the website you viewed earlier on your desktop doesn’t work when you’re sitting on the toilet using your phone. You don’t need to replicate every function of your desktop site across mobiles and tables, using media queries to hide elements by screen size is fine. Just make sure that the user is presented with a clean and happy experience whichever device they choose to view your site.
The second part to improving your site is to focus on the load time. Speed is increasingly important when it comes to SEO too, so there are multiple benefits to spending a little time (a little time.. speed. Get it?) on this.
#Offer something good
Focus on your content. Make sure you present the user with reliable informative advice about your brand, product or service. Don’t cloud your site with filler copy it will only lessen the user experience.
Keep your website useful and relevant, your target audience will respect you.
#Keep it simple
Consider how frustrating it is when you can’t find the closing times on your favourite pizza takeaway’s website. You feel like it’s the first thing they should offer the user yet you find yourself searching page after page. Don’t make your user work for it. Make sure your pages are clearly, and relevantly titled so the user knows where they are and what to expect.
You’d be surprised how many sites destroy the user experience by over-complicating the matter.
#Balance CTA’s
It’s normal to have a call-to-action of some kind on your page. After all, you’re a business and you want to encourage your audience to interact with you. The difficulty here is the balancing act between CTA’s. We’ve seen pages with six or seven buttons in all different shapes, colours and sizes and the only thing it does is put us off.
Consider one or two simple CTA’s and stick to a colour scheme across your site. Perhaps your primary CTA appears in green and secondary CTA’s in blue, or something like that. You get the idea. Just don’t present the user pages with competing CTA’s it will only confuse and annoy them.
#Remove distractions
Make your site work harder for you so you can place less reliance on those one or two top pages. Whilst it seems appealing to keep filling those top performing pages with links to your latest events so all your organic traffic can see, don’t bother. Instead of cramming more and more onto your top ranking pages, take elements away to clean up the user experience. Offer a simple journey through your site. You’ll reap the benefits in the long run.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on how to create an awesome user experience. Leave your comments below to get involved.