5 Ways to Improve Your Website's User Experience
Whether the goal of your website is to produce specific conversions or provide visitors with information, user experience will play a large role in whether or not you are successful. So how do you improve user experience? Here are 5 good starting points for providing an experience that will keep your visitors coming back for more.
- Let metrics replace guesswork: In order to make improvements, you must first know how your users are currently interacting with your website. Google Analytics (or other data analytics platforms) can help provide insight on what strategies and features are working, as well as identify areas that may require some TLC. Taking the time to analyze some cold hard data will guide your strategy toward improvement.
- Know your users. Knowing your audience is key. Understanding their motives, wants, needs, etc. is the first step toward making sure your website has what they came to it for. Keeping their unique needs in mind, you'll be able to more easily present the content in a way that would make sense from their perspective.
- Keep it simple. These days, attention spans run short. We live in the age of the NOW. People want to be able to find what they are looking for right away, so keep your content organized, scannable and to-the-point. Place your most important information toward the top of the page and use headings to quickly direct users to their area of interest.
- Update your website. Outdated, inaccurate information will never leave a customer happy. If there has been a change to your company, there should be a change to your website. Also, providing users something new to see gives them a reason to continue coming back. A blog is a great way to do this. Blogging also gives you the opportunity to give users a more in-depth look into your business without the worry of overwhelming them.
- You can’t go wrong with responsive. We’ve said it over and over again… responsive is the way to go! The number of people using their mobile and tablet devices to make searches continues to increase. Making your visitors pinch and zoom to view content is only going to leave them frustrated and increase the chance that they will exit your website. Responsive design makes it easier than ever for users to find what they are looking for on a website regardless of what device they are using.