As a digital marketing agency, we know how much businesses value getting relevant visitors to their website so they invest in SEO to improve their organic Google rankings or PPC and Social Media to drive traffic to the site, amongst many other digital strategies which focus on generating traffic.
But then they wonder “Why aren’t we getting any new business or more sales?”.
We would love to be able to wave a magic wand and send visitors to your website and it generate hundreds of leads, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way.
What people may forget is even with effective SEO, PPC and other digital strategies in place, if your website isn’t designed with user experience (UX) design principles in mind, all that time, effort and investment in getting people to your website could be wasted with a poorly thought out and designed website.
In this post below we explore some of the key UX design principles that every website should look to deploy to help improve visitor engagement levels and help your business get a better return on investment.
What is User Experience (UX) Design?
UX design for websites is the process of creating a seamless and enjoyable experience for users when they interact with a website. It focuses on better understanding the needs, behaviours and preferences of users to design intuitive, accessible and engaging interfaces.
The goal is to make your website much easier to use, more visually appealing and effective in meeting users’ goals, leading to a greater positive impression and improved satisfaction.
Keep reading to delve into some of the key UX design principles we typically provide during a new website project.
1. Meeting the User’s Needs
One of the first and foremost UX design principles is user-centricity, so designing your website with users in mind ensures that it meets the needs of your audience.
Whether you are designing a new website from scratch or making changes to your current site, instead of jumping in and designing a site which you think looks great, first have a real think about who your audience is:
- Who are your target audience?
- What are their needs?
- What problems are you trying to solve?
- What are their demographics?
By having a clear understanding of your audience, you will be able to apply more focused user designs and adjust your website with them specifically in mind.
If you are unsure whether your website focuses enough on the users’ needs then we highly recommend conducting user testing to understand what you are doing well and what can be improved.
2. Understand User Context
When thinking about the usability of your website, have you ever considered what context someone could be using your website?
Is your audience:
- browsing at home on their smartphone?
- working in a busy office?
- out and about loading your website without wifi?
- working in a noisy factory, etc?
If you take mobile browsing as an example, according to Statista online shopping mobile accounted for 59% of ecommerce sales globally in 2022. If your audience is browsing on a mobile and your website is not very mobile-friendly then you are going to be very likely driving away potential business enquiries.
Or, if your audience is on your website and they are in a noisy environment and you believe a lovely video of someone explaining how your product works will be effective, then think again. If you have a video with someone speaking in it, it’s helpful to have captions and a transcript for people to read instead.
Understanding where and how someone will utilise your website can help you consider a great number of improvements for its usability.
3. Prioritise Usability and Simplicity
Simplicity is key to a positive user experience. Don’t over-complicate your website design, but focus on creating clean, intuitive designs that reduce friction for visitors.
Key things to think about to simplify the design of your website are:
- Simple navigation
- Clear and structured headings
- Descriptive button text
- Logical layout
- Uncluttered design
You want to focus on making it as easy as possible for your users to find information quickly and easily. When planning out a menu navigation for your site remember to keep it simple and aim to ensure that key pages are no more than 2-3 clicks away from any page, it’s better for SEO too!
By prioritising simplicity and usability then you will likely see improvements in engagement because users are staying on your website longer and engaging with your content that much more because your website is easy to navigate.
4. Mobile-First Design
With more users accessing websites from mobile devices, a mobile-first approach is crucial to ensuring a seamless experience across all platforms.
Mobile-first design is exactly as it describes. Instead of designing your site pages for use on a desktop PC and adjusting from there for mobile, instead you start with the mobile design and expand to other devices. This ensures that your site is optimised for mobile users in mind.
Mobile-first design will benefit the UX of your website by:
- Improving user experience – users will not be hindered by mobile device limitations and unique features which are designed for larger tech
- Faster load times – mobile-first design can result in “lighter” web pages that load faster across a mobile network.
- SEO improvements – optimising for mobile can help improve ranking performance (due to meeting Google’s requirements for fast loading websites).
- Reduced bounce rates – by designing with mobile in mind your pages are likely to be more optimised, simple and to the point which can help improve engagement and reduce bounce rates.
If you aren’t sure whether a mobile-first design approach is right for your business then head over to Google GA4 where you can find out what type of device your users are mostly using to reach your site. If you find the majority are on mobile then you definitely need to prioritise a mobile-first design.
5. Optimise Website Speed
Let’s hit you with some stats first:
“53% of visitors to mobile sites leave if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load.“
“A 2-second delay in load time resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%.”
“A slow-loading website can have a negative impact on your Google ranking factor.”
Your website loading speed is a critical factor for user satisfaction. Slow initial loading or slow navigation around a website will likely deter users from exploring your content or completing a purchase or enquiry.
There are many factors involved in optimising the speed of your website – it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to reduce your page load speed from 5 seconds to 2 seconds, it can be a test and adjust approach. A few tips that might help you:
- Optimise your imagery – resize images to the size they are displayed at as and reduce the Kilobyte file size of each image. This is a common problem for many sites.
- Leverage caching – if you have a WordPress website there are several plugins which will enable caching (be warned some plugins can conflict with your website so make sure you test them carefully first)
- Reduce bloated code – at the end of the day, the beautiful website you see at its core is all code. But some websites can have too much code which browsers have to sift through to load your page. Again, plugins can help here to compress your code bloat.
- Avoid unnecessary plugins – some WordPress plugins can generate very large files for a browser to load therefore slowing down your site, so if it isn’t essential consider removing it.
- Invest in better hosting – talk to your web host about how you can improve the speed of your site, this could mean upgrading to a dedicated or Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. If you aren’t getting much help, then consider moving hosts.
Tools for testing website speed
If you aren’t sure how fast your website is there are a few helpful tools you can use to test it:
Improving your website’s load speed isn’t an easy fix so we would recommend talking to your web developer about what can be – just don’t expect it to be an overnight fix.
6. Logical Page Hierarchy
Having a simple navigation menu isn’t the only structural element of your site that you need to optimise for improved user experience, you need to understand the importance of the visual hierarchy of your page.
Hierarchy in UX design refers to prioritising elements on a page to create a clear visual structure based on factors such as:
- Positioning
- Scale
- Colour
- Size
- Repetition
- Proximity
- Whitespace
These factors will encourage the user’s eye to follow a pre-determined path. Our eyes naturally follow a left-to-right reading path and past studies show users reading a page in an F or Z shape pattern.
By understanding these reading patterns and hierarchy on a page you can guide your users to your determined goal such as completing an enquiry form.
7. Provide Clear Calls to Action (CTA’s)
You have successfully engaged your users, they can navigate around your site easily and explore your content but you’re finding that you aren’t converting visitors into enquiries as much as you expected.
You need to ensure that across your site you have clear CTA’s to encourage a user towards an action, whether that be purchasing a product, filling out a form, signing up to a newsletter, downloading a guide etc.
Calls to action should be prominent on your pages with buttons and messaging compelling a user to complete the action and understand what they are going to achieve by completing that action.
Testing and adjusting the placement and messaging of calls to action across your page can help you see what works best for your website.
8. Consistent Visual Design
Consistency in design creates a sense of familiarity and trust, helping users feel comfortable and confident navigating your site. For example, you should use a consistent colour scheme and typography throughout your website to reinforce your brand and make the site feel unified.
This may feel like a no-brainer suggestion for your website but there are small details you may also want to consider such as are all your headings going to be in first letter in caps or all words with the first letter capitalised? Little details like this can make a big difference to that consistent look and feel you need on your site.
You may also want to consider having a consistent design for imagery or graphics across the site and try to avoid mixing and matching too much.
If you are just starting out on a new website build then clearly identifying your brand at the outset and how colours, typography and imagery are used across the site can ensure this consistent visual design is met throughout.
9. Engaging and Readable Content
Content is king, but how you present your content also matters almost just as much as what you are saying. Readability is key to holding your user’s attention so when writing and adding your content to your site you may want to use:
- Clear headings
- Short paragraphs and sentences
- Bullet points and icons to make content easy to scan
In addition to how you present your written content you may also want to consider how you utilise visual media to make your page content more engaging. Don’t just add an image for the sake of filling a space because you think it makes the page look better, think about how you can add infographics, video or graphs which compliment your content.
10. Ensure Accessibility
The Equality Act 2010 states that all businesses should make reasonable adjustments so that those with a disability are not disadvantaged when using a website and The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 require UK public sector businesses to make products and services accessible, this includes a website.
What many businesses may not realise is that by designing for accessibility you are also improving the user experience for everyone. Accessibility is a complex topic and covers a wide range of factors but some of the key and easier to achieve methods to make your website more accessible are:
- Add alt text to all images – this will describe images for anyone with a visual impairment.
- Ensure your colours achieve an accessible contrast – you can check your colour contrast accessibility here.
- Easy to read font – not all font is great to read on a screen even if you love that funky or wiggly style.
- Set heading tags – all your pages should have a H1 (your main heading) and utilise H2’s, H3’s etc to give your page a clear hierarchy.
You can learn more what is web accessibility and why it is important here.
If you are interested in how to make your site more accessible then come and have a chat with our team or speak to your website developer.
Do you Need Help to Review or Improve the UX Design of Your Website?
We know there is a lot to think about when it comes to the UX design of your website and it can feel a bit overwhelming, but the most important thing to remember is that it isn’t just about improving the aesthetics it’s about improving the visitor engagement and increasing conversion rates of your website.
If you need help with understanding how design improvements to your website can improve visitor engagement, then let’s start by having a no-obligation informal chat.
Email us: hello@allthingsweb.co.uk
Call us: 01285 50 55 50