Is your website fulfilling its full potential? Does it maintain the interest of the viewers and convert your content into precious leads? In order to achieve these goals it is vital that your website gives your audience a user-friendly experience. In this article we cover our Four Easy Tips to Improve your Websites User Experience.
4. Understand Who Your Audience Are
Sometimes it is hard to be impartial when it comes to your own website. Your own personal taste and objectives are often different from your target audience. In order to fully realise who your audience is, you have to put yourself in their position. Empathise with their experience and embrace changes that allow for an overall better user experience.
A good web designer will often know the difference between a good and bad user experience. The difference between an average web designer and good one is the willingness to take on feedback from multiple users and not bow to what a client wants every time. Remember that your audience might differ from you and the best way maximise your websites user experience is to understand who your audience are!
3. Design For All Platform Screen Sizes
In the last few years responsive web design is has become the standard practice for all websites. Consider the growing trend of internet users who solely use tablet and mobile devices (51%) compared to desktop users (41%) in the USA. These numbers are set to continue to rise in the next few years. This impact has already changed the way web designers work, with most designers developing websites from mobile upwards instead of the traditional desktop down model of the last twenty years.
Source: StatCounter
2. Be Consistent
A detrimental factor in a bad website user experience is a lack of consistency on a website. Every website should maintain the same design feel and functionality across the whole sit. Making the user having to re-think tasks on the site or feeling that aspects of the site have an inconsistent look to others takes away from the user experience. Presenting the websites key information in an easily accessible and consistent manner leads to a far better user experience.
1. Put The User First
This may sound too obvious, but it’s worth all of your attention. User experience is about putting the user first, catering to the users needs and making viewing your website a pleasurable experience. Depending on your budget, there are a few different methods in order to gauge how well your website works for your audience. Methods such as surveys, focus groups, usability studies, ethnographic field studies and A/B testing can help you maximise your websites user experience.
Having a website with a poor user experience will greatly take away from your business. Regardless of whether your product or services are first class, having a badly thought out UX design will ensure that your business can’t effectively communicate to your target audience.
Bonus: Know The Difference Between Design and User Experience
The difference between design and user experience is the contrast between how something is designed and how it is used. Look at the image above and what do you notice? The user here has bypassed the designed pathway for a quicker path to their destination, thus creating a different user experience to what the designer intended.
In terms of web design you have to think about how your site design can be made more user friendly, while maintaining a structured aesthetic and adhering to web development constraints. In short, make your website easy for your visitors to navigate and view!
For any more information regarding our article on Four Easy Tips to Improve your Websites User Experience or to avail of our services please call Opus Creative on +353 (21) 242 8689 or email us on hello@opuscreative.ie
