Every website or app has the capacity to leave a long-lasting impression on its users, but it could be a good or bad impression. There are a few deciding factors to what makes a positive or negative experience for users, and it’s important to pay attention to them. Positive user experiences lead to faster growth, higher engagement, and an increase in word of mouth and recommendations.
Great UX (user experience) is the key to any high-quality successful website. More brands are realising that in order to stay competitive, they must pay attention to their website or app UX and invest in UX designers and information architects.
What exactly is UX design?
UX design is the focus on the customer experience they have while using your product. Your product could be anything from the actual goods or services you’re selling, to the experience people have while on your website, to the content they’re consuming from you. All of this can happen before a customer even touches your physical product.
Your UX is essentially how you guide your users through your business through the buying process, incorporating both what you want to show them and what they want to see. Their needs should be considered first and foremost—after all, it’s called user experience—but you still need to include information to help reach your business goals. The goal of good UX design is to make it simple for your users to find a unique solution to their needs.
How can you improve your UX?
There are a few ways to test and improve your UX to make sure your customers are enjoying the best experience possible on your website or app. The quickest and simplest way is to work with a company that specialises in usability testing and functionality testing, like digivante.com. They can show you exactly which areas need improving so you know what needs to be tackled.
If you prefer to handle it yourself, there are steps you can take to test and improve your UX. The first is to understand precisely how your users are interacting with your website by monitoring and observing people using it live using a screen capture tool. This way, you can see where they have issues or get stuck, what their opinions are about the site overall, and any statistics about how they interact with your site. Once you’ve identified the problem areas, you can begin to fix them.
Another way of improving your UX is to step back and educate your users. They’re coming to your website in search of information, but perhaps they aren’t exactly sure what kind of information they need. Your landing page should include all the relevant information about your product or service, including its value, purpose, benefits, and a clear explanation of what your customer will get out of it or how it will improve their lives. Empowering your users with knowledge will help them understand what they’re looking for, which will in turn improve the UX.
Clearing away any 404 pages or dead ends can also help users navigate your website. As a developer, you know which links work and which don’t, but your users won’t until they find one – and they will find one! If there’s no clear direction on where to go from the dead end, they could leave your page altogether, which is obviously not ideal. Include copy on your 404 pages to redirect them to the right area of your website—maybe the home page, store page, or help page—so they can continue browsing and find what they’re looking for.