If you’ve ever visited a website and clicked and clicked and clicked to find the information you were looking for – or gave up and never found it – you already know what a bad user experience (UX) feels like: frustrating.
And what happens when you have a bad experience? You click away from that website, never to return. Instead, you take your business (and money) elsewhere.
With so much competition out there, thoughtful UX design is absolutely critical for your company’s website. If it’s done well, your website visitors will enjoy a seamless, intuitive experience – and they won’t even realize it.
Thoughtful and magnetic UX design combines cutting-edge graphics, flawless content, clean layout, and intuitive navigation. While every industry is different, here are a few dos and don’ts to turn your company’s website into a customer magnet:
Do make readability your top priority.
After all, what’s the point of having a site if it fails to get your message across? The design or interface should never impede a user’s ability to browse. As for the text itself, the font size should be 11 points, at a minimum, and there should be plenty of contrast between the font color and background so the text is legible.
Don’t assume users are only using mobile devices or desktops.
Visitors may come to your site from desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, and even watches, and each experience should be seamless. Embrace responsive design so your content will be visible without resizing, panning and scrolling.
Do ensure that page load time is fast.
Resist the urge to put aesthetics over load time. Waiting in line may be a mild inconvenience, but waiting for a website is SO annoying – annoying enough to make users want to give up on you. Users care more about speed than bells and whistles. Skip the plugins, animation effects, and embedded videos if they diminish speed.
Don’t make your content hard for users to find.
In today’s digital age, information is a hot commodity. If users search your site for content, award them by making it readily available. Your navigation design should get them from Point A to Point B with the fewest number of clicks.
Do audit your website.
Broken links, missing images, and dated content will diminish your brand. If you want to be seen as experts in your industry, then careless mistakes are unacceptable. Spend time auditing your website every quarter to ensure it is in tip-top shape.
Don’t make them wait for your best content.
While good things do come to those who wait, website users are famously impatient and will bounce if you lead them through a long (read: boring) introduction before getting to the good stuff. Put your best foot forward by ranking the most important things and making them the focal point of the page. Use headers for visual cues, pictures to demonstrate, and recognizable buttons to navigate.
Do put your clients first.
While recommendations and ads certainly have a place, they shouldn’t interfere with your client’s experience. Besides annoying your clients, intrusive ads can affect your entire marketing plan – Google punishes sites with poor content-to-ad ratios.
Don’t drown your content with bells and whistles.
Although visual elements like videos, photos and infographics sprinkled throughout your site make it more interesting, too much of a good thing can overwhelm your other content – so be strategic with these elements. Oh, and never, ever use auto-play videos; users should be free to interact with the content on their own terms.
Partner with a reputable agency who can do the above – and more – and your website will stand out from the competition. Give us a call, we can optimize your websites content and design to ensure more clicks, actions, and a better experience.
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