Being a website owner, your site will always be your biggest asset.
Serving as a platform to promote your business, it is a great tool that you can use to promote your business, products, and services.
But technology can move rapidly, and it could be challenging to keep up with the dos and don'ts of your site.
If you are looking for small, actionable ways on how to improve the user experience in your site, you have come to the right place. Here are nine tips on how you can have a better website user experience:
Create visual and typographic hierarchies
The text in your content should be easily distinguished to enhance its readability. There are usually three to four levels:
- Title (H1)
- Headings (H2)
- Sub-headings (H3)
- Body of text or paragraph
There are also several ways that you can establish your hierarchy:
- Color
- Weight
- Size
- Contrast
- Position
Your most important text should be poised as bigger, larger, and bolder. As its importance decreases, its prominence also decreases.
Use more white space
Often, a lot of business owners think that white space on their website is a huge no-no. They believe that a website should be saturated with as much information as possible. But market research is revealing another different story.
It is revealed the whitespaces around titles and headings create a positive influence on the attention of users. That's because users have only one thing to focus their attention on, instead of being distracted with the content or sidebar.
It also gives a website a more fresh and modern look. Therefore, as a brand owner, you need to understand this.
Provide a concise navigation
It is important that your website’s navigation is simple and concise.
Most businesses, especially online retailers, make the mistake of complicating their navigation, causing site visitors to leave and never to return.
That's why you have to make your site navigation as simple and concise as possible. That way, users can browse through your site without the hassle.
Ideally, your navigation should be intuitive. The labels should be descriptive enough and try to limit the menu items to seven.
Make clickable elements noticeable
The thing with people who usually visit your site is that they are always usually in a hurry.
They want to get what they want without wasting a second. The goal of your website is fulfilled when somebody takes action by simply clicking a link or a button. Therefore, you have to make these elements obvious and noticeable.
Links and buttons look different in various browsers and operating systems. Luckily, with the help of CSS, you could retain a constant style for your browsers and devices.
Design according to your users’ tastes
Once you know who your target audience is, figure out a style that speaks strongly to them.
Using a design or layout choices based on their preferences will make them likely visit your site. Moreover, the colors that you have picked for your design should match your brand palette and complement its surrounding features.
If your brand is only using muted colors, but you want to appeal with a younger audience with more vibrant tones, find a middle ground by incorporating some of your user's preferences without having to sacrifice your brand style.
Remember that less is more
Trim down a few elements on your website for greater user experience.
Having a cluttered storefront or site design will be challenging for users to navigate. They do not know where to go and what elements are important.
Find a balance between negative and positive space, so that there would be enough room to showcase what is available.
Highlight the most important product and information on your site by adding more whitespace around it. It works well, especially if you want the attention to be drawn on that specific product.
Catch and customize your 404s
A 404 error could be a huge roadblock to those who are reading your page. Even if you have only one page in your site that has a 404, readers will likely navigate away from your site and will look for a more reliable one instead.
Meaning, even a single 404 will drive visitors away.
To avoid this from happening, search for all the 404s in your site before someone from your audience does. And instead of letting your site navigate the standard 404, personalize it to make it more friendly and attractive.
Nonetheless, we advise that all 404s should be avoided as much as you can.
Make it mobile-friendly
Recently, Google has been penalizing websites that aren't optimized for mobile devices.
That's why there's a need for your site to be more mobile-responsive is more important than ever. This is the most valuable way you can improve the visibility of your site.
Design and test the customer journey
Using a wireframe to sketch out the architecture of your site or layout of your store can help you avoid major user errors.
Careful planning in your site design, both online and offline, will be the key to creating an excellent user experience. You need to test out every element and run it through your buyer persona's perspective.
Think about your page's user journey. What is the usual order a user will travel into your site and down to your sales funnel?
When you come across an element that is not working, or questionable, then brainstorm for ideas on how you could fix or improve that feature.
When your store opens, or when your site goes live, the overall experience on users' end should be as seamless as possible.
Test out every element first before users interact with it.
Over to You
Having a responsive design, fast page load speed, concise navigation, and all the other tips we have mentioned in this post will give your users a better browsing experience.
Hopefully, this will give you ideas on how to improve your site and make it more user-friendly without spending a lot of dollars on a complete redesign.
We hope that it gave you inspiration on the changes that you need to take to update your site to give it the best user experience possible.
About the Author
Kenneth Sytian is the Owner and CEO of Sytian Productions Web Developer Philippines. He has been designing websites and developing web apps for more than a decade. He is the driving force behind the company and influencer in the industry of web design and development in the Philippines.