User experience or UX is how a user feels when interacting with your website. Even if you design a beautiful website with some amazing features, if your users are not able to have a great experience, then all the effort you put in becomes fruitless.
UX can be controlled by you or your creative website designer, by paying attention to some factors such as aesthetics, accessibility, performance, and usability. Some factors that affect user experience are:
Loading Speed
Slow loading pages negatively impact user experience and if it takes more than a few seconds to load, users generally leave your website. Google considers website speed to be a factor in its search rankings. Ecommerce websites with higher loading speed have better conversion numbers.
There are many ways to make your website faster. Work with your Boston creative design website designer to optimize images, plugins, use caches, streamline your code etc. to speed up your loading.
Mobile Friendly
The number of people accessing the Internet through their smartphone or tablet is rising. If this is true for your website as well, ensure that all pages on your website are mobile friendly, whether you optimize for it or have a separate mobile website. Make your mobile website minimal and uncluttered so that moving from one page to the next is intuitive. Your layout should be clear on tablets or smartphones with differently sized displays and the buttons or CTAs should be touch or stylus friendly.
Forms can be difficult to fill in on mobile sites. Make them short, with auto-filled fields; use mobile friendly options like progress bars and use top-aligned labels. On mobile websites, you can really take advantage of the other apps on the phone. For example, you can give the option to take a photo from the Photo Gallery to upload a profile picture or make a phone call to Customer Support by clicking on the “Call Us’ icon. So, ensure your mobile website is optimized for this.
Easy to Navigate
Your website layout should be easy to navigate for the best UX. There is no point having a website full of new and exciting content if the user is so frustrated trying to move around the website that he or she gives up and leaves. Some things you can do to help are:
- For an English website, placing the menu categories on the top or on the left is a good bet, as English speakers are used to reading from left to right.
- Have clear menu categories and group relevant items together adding some visual cues.
- Use wording which is standard to your industry.
- Personalize whenever possible.
SMILE can help you optimize your website for the best user experience. To learn more about how our Boston Website Design agency can help you, contact us today.
