The marketing landscape is an ever-changing one in today’s digital world and your website is the powerful tool for your marketing efforts. Your website is a 24/7 salesperson to bring you every potential asset you seek for.
The technology is rapidly changing, so redesigning is an inevitable factor to make your website feel new and updated. Also, if the website is designed with products, services and required information stashed in a right place, users will find an easy way to get benefitted by cross-selling and engaging.
In simple words, UX ensures the visitors to find what they need and perform actions accordingly.
The term User Experience (UX) was introduced by Don Norman in early 1990s and it refers to every characteristic of user interaction with the products, services and the organization. If any issues are encountered, UX strives to find a solution to resolve them. The most critical factors of UX are visual design, cognitive psychology, human interaction, and behavior. User interface (UI) is a part of UX that deals with the website or mobile app appearance.
Are you unsure that your site has a great UX? Do not worry; here are 10 questions to evaluate the website for better UX.
1. Can you ensure a mobile-friendly website?
This is one of the most important questions you must ask yourself for a responsive website. Users may access your website from their desktops, smartphones or tablets, so it is a must that the websites need to be user-friendly. Also, Google penalizes those websites which are not user-friendly.
2. Do you know that white space is beneficial?
Studies show that adding white space to your website definitely helps to increase the user attention by 20% as white space makes your content clear and legible and also helps users to focus on other important elements.
3. Have you used effective web designing images?
It is the responsibility of front-end developers to craft UI, test UX and to develop the overall look, color, and feel. Think outside box and source hero images, images with different crop sizes, images for UI elements and icons etc.
4. Have you checked your website if it is cluttered?
Do you have more products and services to offer? How have you arranged in on the site? Are they cluttered? If you are confused to answer it correctly, just ask yourself and make sure the users can get the important information on any product and service within 7-8 seconds. This is the time duration where a user spends his attention on a page. Too much content won’t help the users to focus on their requirement.
5. Does your website take much time to load?
An ideal website must load in 2 seconds. High-security websites (HTTPS) takes longer time due to data encryption and long distance. Thus UX architect must take special care on the loading time of website as it decides the better user experience and thereby more traffic. To create a website is quite easy, but to develop a website that follows web design principles require time and effort.
6. Do you have bad links on your site?
If users can’t find the information on the website, they will never wait for another second to get it. This may adversely affect your website. So fix all the bad links immediately by checking the errors using 404 error tool.
7. Have you ensured your blogs are not misleading?
Promising blogs can add value to your website, but a strict no-no to false promises. Blogs should not convey a false message as the users constantly perceive your brand. So if you deliver false promises, your brand identity may be affected. Always try to make a good impression of your brand through any contents on your site.
8. Are the online forms confusing?
Check if the online form on your website can be filled easily. If not, make it user-friendly and keep in mind that you shouldn’t confuse the users with more questions. Get most important details only in order not to lose a user.
9. Are the call-to-action buttons descriptive?
Yet another important factor that decides good user experience is call-to-action. Your site may have good content, images, blogs or white spaces, but these won’t serve the purpose if you don’t guide the users how to proceed further. As a best UX architect, you must keep in mind that call-to-action must never be confusing yet descriptive.
10. Are you monitoring user activity with Google Analytics?
Even though there are many factors indicating UX, it doesn’t mean you will get desired user experience for sure. But close evaluation of user activity by Google analytics is very important along with the above-mentioned factors.
A good website with good UX will have lower bounce rates with higher conversion rates. If you have not considered any of the above-mentioned factors as important, then this is the high time. Watch your users’ interactions with the site, monitor the time spent on each page by the users, collect and evaluate data on their activities and split test page variations to provide the best user experience with your website.
Author Bio: Rajeesh is a Director and Creative Head at Acodez. He helps the company to meet its clients’ needs to craft a compelling online presence. His 10+ years experience and expertise in UX, UI, Information Architecture and Wireframing help the company to develop user-friendly, pleasing and aesthetically appealing websites. He regularly researches and writes about the latest trends in web designing and development.
