It’s important to keep visitors in mind when it comes to building a website for your business. Whether you aim to generate quality leads or improve user engagement, the best metric you will need to focus on is user experience.
Keeping people on your website for a long time allows you to accomplish your goals. Meeting the needs of users and guiding them toward making an informed choice is crucial to this. A user-centric website is essential to the success of your digital marketing and brand-building efforts. Follow the steps below and give web visitors a good reason to stay and, ultimately, convert:
1. Know what your market wants
Designing a great website is not always a straightforward process. The only challenge is knowing what attracts and engages your target audience. For this, you need to analyze user behaviors and use them as insights for designing the look and feel of your website.
Market research is essential in making sure you know what to add and remove from your website so it fits the needs and expectations of your visitors. Consider running online polls or forming focus groups. You can also analyze the websites of your competitors and check how the layout, features, and text are optimized for better user engagement.
With thorough research, you will have a more accurate understanding of how visitors engage and interact with your website. This, in turn, will give you the insights you need to start building.
2. Keep it simple but functional
Before, business owners would go all-out in designing their websites. They followed the principle of adding as much content as possible. The game has changed as users today respond better to functional websites with minimal yet compelling content.
Aim for simplicity and brevity; cluttered websites turn to discourage users from engaging further, so aim to include only content that adds value. You also need to ensure that the layout is built for easier navigability. Every button or call-to-action should stand out. You shouldn’t also spend most of your time scrolling for the information they need.
A simple user interface is more than enough to expose visitors to your messages, find their way around your website, and make better purchasing decisions.
3. Decrease the loading speed
Another important factor that affects user experience is the time it takes for all the content on each web page to load. Websites that take more than three seconds to load give new users a good reason to bounce away. They often suffer from high bounce rates which could also hurt their search engine rankings.
If your website is taking too long to load, consider applying a few key optimizations. Start by removing plugins your website doesn’t use anymore. You should also reduce the number of CSS files and compress large images using tools like Squoosh. Another way you can speed up your website is to use a content delivery network that caches content and brings it closer to visitors.
The last option you might want to consider is to switch to a website hosting provider which delivers optimal loading speeds, especially if you are planning a major redesign for your current website.
4. Design around accessibility
Building a website also requires making sure that everyone has access to all your online assets. By “everyone,” this also includes persons with disabilities such as hearing impairment and color blindness. Following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is a good start.
These rules may include standards on font sizes, readability, and the use of captions and text-to-speech tools. It’s also important to ensure that every webpage provides adequate color contrasts so that each piece of content stands out. By ensuring accessibility, your website is in a better position to engage everyone that would want to learn about you or buy from you.
5. Get an expert for the job
Improving user experience isn’t a job you could handle on your own. Platforms like Wix and Shopify offer an easier and faster way to launch your website, but you still need to go the extra mile to build one that delivers greater user experiences.
Look for an agency to help you with building a new website or redesigning your current one. Consider companies like Bizango that will help highlight the best that your website has to offer. They can also work closely in coming up with a layout and content plan that’s designed to decrease bounce rates and raise user dwell time.
Investing in user experience improves your business’s visibility and boosts conversions. The process can take longer, but the results could push your business over and above everyone else in your industry or niche!