No matter how much time and money you chose to invest into your website, the overall experience that it offers to your end users in terms of convenience, utility, value, efficiency, visual appeal and so on, collectively determine its degree of success or failure. The term “User Experience” was first coined by American Academician Donald Norman in the 1990s, and it has become a widely studied branch of Cognitive Science today. Although the fundamental principles of User Experience remain the same for all tangible and intangible entities, an understanding of the facets of website user experience is a must for online marketers nowadays. Here are 7 useful tips for enhancing your website’s user experience:-
Work on improving your Site’s Loading Time:
More than anything else, the average consumer is short of time today, which makes speed the single-most important parameter as far as Website User Experience is concerned. If you have to do away with certain graphics or design elements in order to achieve a loading time of 3 seconds or less (which happens to be the current benchmark), then be it so.
Improve the Efficiency of your Search Function:
It can be a frustrating experience for an end-user if he is trying to look for something specific on your site, and the search function is not up to the mark. Improving your search function works both ways because a survey of the search terms will provide you in-sights on what your visitors are exactly looking for.
Enhance the Readability of your Website
Put yourself in the shoes of your end-user and look at your site. Are your font style, font color and background color in harmony with each other? Does your text have sufficient spaces and breaks in between? Has your content been presented in easily digestible chunks, with use of headers, bullet points, numbers, captions and highlights wherever required? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself in order to improve the readability of your website.
Introduce Variety and Value in your Content
As far as variety of content is concerned, the more is the merrier in this era of Digital Marketing. So go ahead and include videos, audio clips, blog posts, whitepapers and so on in your website, in order to keep your users educated, entertained and engaged.
Proof Read over and over again:
Even small misspells and grammatical errors can create havoc in a well-built site. So always ensure that the content is proof read by more than one person.
Make your Logo a Clickable link to your Home Page
This will reduce the number of users who cannot find a home tab and end up abandoning your site. This is because a visitor who is lost can always find his or her way back to the home page, instead of having to press the back button consecutively.
Cater to the increasing needs of mobile and tablet users
Considering that the number of mobile and tablet browsers are on a constant rise, you will need to adjudge the requirements of your target market segments, and either adopt a responsive web design or have a separate mobile site developed.
In the words of American Designer Raymond Loewy, “The main goal is not to complicate the already difficult life of the consumer”, and this in fact is the crux of Website User Experience- keeping it simple enough to enable your visitors to find what they want without having to face any unnecessary barriers, hassles or complications. Once you are successful in achieving this, your website becomes every bit worth its penny.
