You know how people say that the first impression is the most important? Well, that's the rule that can be applied to both the real and online world and something that you should aspire for when building a website.
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Many researches have shown that people need approximately one or two seconds to determine whether they like your website or not. This just goes to show that if your site is in any way faulty and isn’t visually appealing, the visitors are going to immediately notice that.
Since the competition is fierce in the online world, you need to do whatever you can to ensure your website isn't only fully functional but stands out from the rest too. If you would like to know how you can accomplish web design and user experience optimization, then just cast your eyes on these tips below.
Seek Professional Help
In today’s world, if you want to have a competitive edge, and simultaneously, remain successful, then it’s essential to have a responsive site.
If you’re inexperienced as far as this is concerned, then it would be wise to make use of a responsive web design agency, because they know exactly what needs to be done to ensure your website runs smoothly and provides a top-notch user experience.
Bear in mind that when a website is responsive, easy to navigate, and make purchases, it's going to encourage people to stay longer on your site.
Aside from that, when you hire a responsive web design agency, they will ensure you have a responsive design, which will inevitably affect (in the most positive sense) your site’s search engine ranking.
Most importantly, those who want to tighten their belt would be glad to know that they’ll, in fact, save a lot of cash on these sorts of services, because with them, you’ll only need to manage one website, which means that you will significantly decrease maintenance and development expenses.
Focus On Having Interesting Content
Blog posts are one of the first things that a vast majority of companies utilize when they want to interact with their audience and promote their business on their site. Namely, those who go straight to your website want to know everything about your company, its services/products, what it stands for, and many other things.
If you want to make sure they stay on your website for as long as possible, then you can do so with engaging content. First and foremost, you need to ensure that anyone can easily access it.
What does it mean? It means that users from any device (particularly computers and mobile phones) can access it without experiencing any issues.
Of course, there's no need to remind you that it's of huge importance to make sure that the font on your site can easily be read on mobile phones, and it also wouldn't hurt if you added the option for people to listen to your content in audio format.
There are several factors that you need to consider when creating first-class content. It needs to be valuable, interesting, full of useful information, and credible. Its main goal is to answer any question that the visitors have so that they are never in doubt.
Another thing that you should do in terms of content, is to conduct keyword research when crafting a blog post. By adding relevant keywords to it, you’ll be able to quickly reach the target audience.
Boost The Page Speed
If you talk to an average user, and ask them what frustrates them the most when it comes to websites, they'll most likely tell you that they despise it when the web pages take too long to load.
And this shouldn’t come as a surprise, because, after all, everybody wants to access the content that piqued their interest as fast as they can. That’s especially the case with those who browse the web on their smartphones.
Once they realize that a site is too slow, in most cases, they’ll simply give up on it and move on to a different one. That’s because slow page load negatively influences their experience which causes them to be very frustrated, and you do not want that to happen, right?
According to several online reports, if your website takes more than four to five seconds to load, that will surely increase its bounce rate, by over twenty percent. Sounds pretty scary! Now, the question is, how can you fix that?
For starters, you should get all the information concerning your score. Luckily, Google is here to help you. It provides a service that’s entirely free of charge, where you can get a glimpse of your page speed.
And that’s not everything it has to offer. Namely, it will provide you with some suggestions that can potentially help you enhance load time on both computers and cell phones. What you can do, at this very moment, is to compress all the pictures before you put them on your website.
Why does it matter? Well, that's because image file size most commonly causes a slow page speed. Luckily, there are a number of tools that you can use that can help you drastically speed up all your web pages.
The Navigation Shouldn’t Be Complex At All!
One of the first things that people will notice when they enter your site is the navigation. No person in this world wants to deal with a website that’s too complicated to navigate. On the contrary.
If they notice that everything is too confusing for them, they’ll simply go elsewhere, which will negatively influence the bounce rate as well. But don’t fret! There are various things that you can do to streamline your website’s navigation.
First and foremost, be sure you do not have a menu that’s packed with a variety of different options. That may seemingly be a great idea, but it will only further puzzle your visitors because they won’t be able to easily find what they are looking for which will result in frustration.
Furthermore, it would be wise to employ a horizontal menu to showcase the most relevant aspects of your site, like the About section, Features, Pricing, Contact section, etc. Aside from these things, there are several others that you can implement that are going to make navigation much smoother and they include the following:
- Convert your calls to action into buttons
- Use short menu titles
- Utilize breadcrumbs so that visitors can keep track of their location while being on your site
- Arrange menu items by their relevance
You Must Be Mobile Friendly
Long gone were the days when people were only using their computers whenever they wanted to visit a specific website. The times have dramatically changed over the past couple of years when it comes to this.
These days, a vast majority of people use their mobile phones when browsing the web, which just means that your site must be properly optimized and allow users to enjoy it from their cell phones to the maximum.
Keep in mind that the mobile version of your website must be cleaner than the desktop version, meaning that you should minimize page elements, and concurrently, scale down a couple of assets, such as the menu.
Besides that, you should consider adding some interesting mobile features that are going to further spruce up your mobile design. Now, if you still haven't launched your site because you are not sure how it's supposed to look, then you can always surf the web and go to the websites that you can use as inspiration.
Also, you can visit forums and web pages that are dedicated to web design to get familiar with the newest trends as far as this is concerned.
Get Rid Of Navigation Bottlenecks
This may be one of the most pivotal, yet the most challenging parts of the user experience. What you need to know, is that it is practically impossible to create a navigation and page structure that are going to perfectly fit every single site in the world.
In these instances, you would be forced to return to the drawing board in order to improve this part of your site. Instead, you should focus on creating a list of situations that people are going through when they are visiting your website.
There are a lot of things that they are experiencing, starting from making a purchase, to learning more about your brand and its services and products, and many other things. It’s of huge importance to thoroughly analyze everything so you can conclude if there’s anything that hinders the sales process.
It would be great if you included as many people as you can, since people who have developed the site are most likely familiar with all the shortcuts, and won’t be able to spot any issues so quickly. To spot bottlenecks that aren’t that visible, you can employ Google Analytics customer journeys.
It's safe to say that a business website (the one that is properly developed, of course) has become an omnipotent tool that can help any company thrive and expand. However, if it isn't properly optimized, it's not going to be able to achieve that. That's why it's essential to implement all these tips that were mentioned today.
Web Design and User Experience Optimization – FAQs
- Does the content you post matter? Of course, it does. In fact, it's one of the most important aspects of your website. It helps you engage with your audience, and, at the same time, develop their interest in your brand.
- Can you have a website that isn't mobile-friendly? Most definitely not! In this day and age, that's mandatory due to the massive increase in mobile users.
- What do to if your site takes a lot to load? For starters, you can consult Google because it is here to provide you with some assistance when it comes to this. Secondly, you should compress all your images before putting them on your website.
- How important website navigation is? It’s crucial! If users find your website to be very difficult to navigate, they’ll probably leave it immediately.
