You have probably heard the term user experience, or UX, tossed around a bit lately. Though the term has been used as a trend, there is certainly nothing trending about user experience at all. UX is here to stay. And if your website is lacking the conversion rate you want to see, user experience is the answer. From site speed to navigation, how a site visitor accesses and engages with your website is critical to maximum conversions.
“Digital user experience encompasses all aspects of a person’s interaction with your web or mobile site including behavior, actions, perceptions and satisfaction,” Casey Weisbach explained in a Forbes article. “Putting an emphasis on user experience will not only benefit your customers but will consequently deliver results for your company.”
How do you leverage website user experience to maximize conversions? This could be a million dollar question for your business. The following UX must-haves can serve as your guide to get more sales. Let’s dive in!
Make Your Website Speed Lightning Fast
The speed in which your website loads has become a big Google ranking factor. This can help your site’s web pages rank higher in Google SERPs increasing your online visibility. However, site speed also has a conversion-minded capability.
Part of providing a powerful user experience is having your website load under three seconds. One second or less is optimal. How fast is your site? Check it using Pingdom or Google PageSpeed Insight tool.
These tools can also show you how fast your site is on desktop and mobile with information on how to make it faster. It could be as simple as optimizing images on web pages, or you may need to upgrade your hosting plan to get more bandwidth and disk space.
Make Mobile Devices A User Experience Priority
There are more Google search queries made via mobile devices than desktops now. This is a UX signal to make mobile devices a priority for maximum conversions and sales. If a site visitor has a poor experience engaging with your site on their smartphone, they are likely to abandon your site for one of your competitors.
There are tools to check your website’s mobile usability, like Google’s mobile-friendly test. This tool can give you the details about how user friendly your site is on mobile devices, and also help you fix them. Most of these fixes have some SEO tactics involved, so you may need to research mobile SEO a bit.
Think About Site Navigation
When it comes to providing a powerful user experience for maximum conversions, you will need to consider site navigation. This is essentially how website visitors will navigate your web pages, and how easy it is for them to find the information, answers, and products they seek in the fastest amount of time.
A great way to better understand how your site navigation is working, is to use heat map tracking and feedback polls. The more you learn from your audience and see how they are using your site, the better you can prepare it for future visits and user engagement.
Site navigation starts with your main menu bar. This should encompass your site map, highlighting your top pages. Your main menu needs to be clear and concise without any broken 404 errors for site visitors to stumble upon during navigation.
Throughout a web page, you should also have clear call to actions that help guide site visitors to pages that provide information and products you want to sell. Use your buyer journey to ensure all pages are connected with path to a conversion, whether that is a product sale or email capture for sales team lead generation.
Do Not Have Cluttered Web Pages
Cluttered web pages create frustration and confusion for website visitors, and this results in them leaving your site to visit a competitor’s site. This makes having a clean website with a lot of open space important for UX. For example, your web pages should have a clear heading in the above the fold content, letting visitors know they are on the right page for what they are looking for.
Sections of web pages are also important. You want your site visitors to be able to quickly find the details of each section quickly. The content for each section also needs to be in a very concise paragraph with subheading. Surrounding all this should be sufficient white space so visitors feel comfortable. Websites like Google My Business and MailChimp do a great job of this. You can also use WordPress custom templates to help keep your web pages uncluttered.
Is Your Website’s User Experience Exceptional?
Having exceptional user experience in place is no longer an option, it is mandatory. Your competitors most likely already provide a powerful UX web design, and you need to stay competitive. Make UX a priority using the above tips and increase your conversion rate for more leads and sales.
