Web Design for User Experience
Everyone is starting to hear a lot about UX design or User Experience Design and how important it is. Not so many people understand exactly what it is and why it is so important. So what is UX for web and how can it help your business?
User Experience Design (UXD or UX) in web design is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and efficiency of user interaction with websites. Put simply, it is the journey a user takes when they land on a web site until they leave. This journey can be good, bad or indifferent depending on the experience offered to the user.
UX is big business as research shows a direct correlation between efficient and user-friendly websites and increased sales and conversions.
Sound good?
Review your UX for web with these top tips:
- Understand Your Customers
It is vital that you understand your customer demographic and what they expect from your site. Do your research and never miss an opportunity to collect as much information as possible on your website audience. Find out as much as possible about your customers goals when they reach your site and how quickly they expect to reach their goals.
Every design has a purpose and that is to reach their target audience effectively. Design to speak to your target audience and clearly identify how your design is going to reach your target audience expectations when they land on your site.
- Identify your Website Entry Points
Where is your website traffic coming from? Here are possible sources:
- Typing your web address directly into Google
- Organic traffic from ranking high on Google
- Adwords
- Social media
- Newsletter links
- Referral sites
Don’t know?? Better get on to Google analytics and find out.
- First Impressions Count – Craft an Inviting Homepage
Your homepage should be visually striking with on point messaging. You want your user to take home one key message from your homepage. Don’t clutter your page with a series of messages. Keep content clear and simple and don’t offer too many choices.
- Map your user Journey
Understand what your users do when they arrive on your site and where their journey starts and ends. Make every step of the journey user friendly so that user can achieve the outcome and path you desire them to follow. Have plenty of calls to action throughout the process prompting the user towards an outcome. Your design will have to overcome any challenges a user faces throughout their journey so highlight content as appropriate and have the design pre-empt the hurdles and blockages a user might have when navigating through your website.
- Content Copy Matters
Great design needs to be backed up with content that delivers the information your user requires in the easiest format possible. Use of space, headings, sub-headings, colour blocks and typography all work together to compliment your design. Make sure the information on your site answers key questions that an audience require.
- Responsive Design
You need to design for every screen so that the user experience is as good on mobile and tablet as it is on desktop. It is essential that best practice for responsive design is implemented on every page and not just the key pages of your site. Your website will at least be viewed as often on a mobile screen as a desktop screen and your design needs to shine in both scenarios.
- Testing and Improvement
You need to continually tweek your website design so that it is responding optimally to how users are interacting with your site. Users habits change and you need to keep up to date with how users are engaging with your site and adapting your design to facilitate these changes.