If you want to build up a loyal customer base and keep your customers happy and engaged then you’re going to need to ensure that they are having the best possible experience when using your site. In this article, we’ll be looking at 4 quick and easy steps to boost your site’s user experience.
Building your website can be a lot of fun but it’s also easy to get carried away. If you’ve been tempted by the look of some of the cool gadgets and gizmos available to you in web building tools but not been sure how they can help your site then we’re here to help.
Here are 5 easy steps to improve your users’ experience.
Design
It’s easy to stuff your site with things which look pretty and cool but, they could be hampering your customers’ experience and confusing them when all they want to do is make a purchase.
This doesn’t mean your site shouldn’t look amazing, it just means don’t choose style over substance.
There are two rules from artists and writers that you can use to judge your site almost instantly. The first axiom comes from the famous 20th century architect Louis Sullivan. He stated that ‘form follows function’, meaning that use should always come before aesthetics. This is just as true for your websites as it is for architecture.
The aim of your site is to sell products, however, if you let your design ideas get in the way of your goals then you’ll see your conversion rate drop dramatically. It’s often far better to go with a clear and simple design which uses a standard 3 pale colour palatte that looks smart but doesn’t distract the customer away from the product or the final sale. In fact, your whole design should in some way point your customers to where you want them to go.
The second tenet you should always remain faithful to is the dramatic principle of ‘Chekov’s Gun’. Anton first outlined the principle within his letters, in which he wrote:
“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
Implementing the principle of Chekov’s Gun on your website is easy, and it answers the problem we met with at the beginning. Whilst there are cool widgets for your site out there, if you can’t answer how they add to your site, then don’t put them on it. Similarly, if your answer is, ‘because it looks cool’, don’t put it there. Your idea of cool is subjective and your customers will just see it as irrelevent.
Get to the point
Now that we have an idea about what to exclude from you page, it’s time to consider things that you should include.
The rise in technology over the last 2 decades and the changing ways in which people receive and digest information means that most of your visitors will have a reduced attention span. It’s a pity, especially if you want to go into great detail about how awesome your product is. However, the onus is now on you, your copywriter and your graphic designer, to ensure that your site retains the same level of information necessary to make the sale. This is still possible, but it requires a little more creativity to function in a viewer friendly way.
There are several ways to do this. If you have a good writer then they will be able to minimise the words count and maximise the message conveyed. Here are two examples from Coca-Cola:
‘Whoever You Are, Whatever You Do, Wherever You May Be, When You Think of Refreshment Think of Ice Cold Coca-Cola’ -circa 1939
‘Life Tastes Good’ - circa 2001
It may seem simple, but writing succinctly can be very difficult, as most of us tend not to monitor our language very often. One test you can do is to look at your previous campaigns and go through them line by line, to see how much you can reduce the word count. Quite often you’ll find between 25-50% of it is either repeated, irrelevent or just plain unecessary.
Another way in which you can ensure that your readers don’t get bored is to include visuals. Infographics are a great way to do this and, if you create a shareable inforgraphic that people can share then you’ll also get an additional ad boost free of charge; just be sure to include directions back to your site on the infographic itself.
If you’re not sure how to make an infographic then check out Venngage. Their subscription based platform gives you all of te tools you need to make attractive infographics to boost your audience engagement and sell your product.
Another great way to cut down on the word count is to use attractive images and videos. Remember, a picture paints a thousand words and this can be priceless in reducing word count whilst still enticing the customer to buy. Similarly, videos engage with people who simply don’t like reading. This is more challenging on the development side, but it allows you a little more space to be creative, just be sure to do your research beforehand. There are a lot of people out there that make filmmaking look easy, however, if you don’t plan it properly then you risk losing a lot of money.
There is one rule to be aware of before filming and that is that things will go wrong; they always do! If you don’t think you can pull off a production yourself, then ask around. There are filmmakers in every town and city in the world who are looking for a chance to add things to their portfolio, if you can’t do it yourself, then it will pay to hire someone who can.
Ensure Easy Navigation
Navigation is essential to how well your website performs. As we have already covered, if things are too confusing and it isn’t obvious what direction you want people to take, then you will end up losing valuable customers. Here are a few quick tips to making sure your website is clear and concise:
1. Have someone you know look at it and complete a simple action: You can write up a list of tasks and things you want from your customers and ask your friends to test them out. This way you’ll find out whether or not they were distracted by certain elements and, more importantly, whether they were easily able to get from point A to point B.
2. Check all of your links: This is very important! Broken links that don’t go anywhere will really put people off of using your site and you can’t expect to make sales if people can’t actually get to your point of sale in the first place. What’s more, if your site links don’t work, people won’t trust that their payment will go through or that, when it does, they’ll receive their goods. Think about it, if you walk into a restaurant and the table is wobbling, the chairs are broken and there are wires hanging from the ceiling, you probably aren’t going to expect the food to be any good. Therefore, make sure your site is running smoothly.
3.Include a Call to Action: Calls to Action are really important as they tell your customer in no uncertain terms what they should do. Don’t be afraid to point out the obvious because, what seems obvious to you in the development of your site might not be so clear to your potential customers.
4. Create a gradient colour palette to influence customer direction: Colour palattes are not just there to make everything look pretty, they can also serve to draw attention to your Calls to Action. Here are two examples going from top to bottom and then left to right:
As you can see, they don’t distract the user from the main objective, in fact, most people probably won’t even notice they are there, however, they serve to lure your customers’ eyes in the dirction you want them to go. Take another look for yourself and see which direction your line of vision is automatically attracted to.
In addition to this advice, you should also use colour palettes regardless. Colour is very strongly associated to cognitive behaviour and using the wrong mix could be putting people off subconciously. We’ll be looking in more depth at using colours in your campaigns in the future, so stay tuned by signing up to our newsletter.
Speed up your Website
Recent studies suggest that almost 50% of people expect a site to load in under 2 seconds. That’s pretty fast! But if you load your site full of high definition images, widgets and videos, then it will have a major impact on your site’s loading time. To find out what else affects your site’s speed and what you can do to improve it, check out our article on [The Importance of Speed](Link). Speed is crucial if you want to make conversions, and a slow site will keep you from maximizing your profits.
Cross-Platform Performance
If you want your website to be user friendly for the majority of people then you need to ensure that it works cross-platform on mobile and tablet devices. People are constantly on their phones, and if you aren’t targeting mobile users you will greatly reduce your potential conversions.
Ensuring that your site has cross-platform capabilty is pretty easy these days and most website building tools give you easy options to make sure it works across all devices.