Your website plays a vital role in the digital marketing efforts of your business. Designing a great website user experience requires you to understand the intent of each visitor of your business. You can consider your website as a salesperson who is always ready to sell. All you have to do is promote it through multiple channels and make it easy to use. Visitors will flee if your website user experience is not intuitive. 

Design-related trends are always changing and if your website is old, then it may not be relevant anymore. Redesigning a website can take a lot of time and money. Sometimes, you can improve the website user experience without creating new problems. 

Here are ten tips on how to improve user experience.

• Use white space

You may think that a lot of white space is being wasted on your site and that it can be used for more content or advertising. However, having white space is essential to a good user experience design. White space enables users to focus on your content without being distracted. 

White space around text and title can increase user focus by around 20%. This is certainly a good thing for your website. Users will stay on your website for a long duration and take actions that are positive for your business. 

You have to find a balance between crucial content for your business and the white space. Because a lot of white space can make the website look incomplete. It can ruin the website user experience too. Having a good amount of white space on the website allows the user to know more about your business and how they can use your services or products. 

This improves the customer acquisition journey and each customer you get will have high hopes. That is why you should create your website with a good amount of white space. 

• Optimize page speed

A website with good speed improves the website user experience. One of the most frustrating experiences that a user can experience is a website that refuses to load properly. People are accessing content on their mobile phones and they do not like to wait for the content to load. So if you were wondering how to improve user experience then improving the page speed of your website will do the trick. 

Create your website in a way that leads to fast loading speed because otherwise, the bounce rate will increase. That is because no one will have the patience to wait for your site’s content to load. 

Google provides information about the speed of your site. You can assess how well your site fairs for the end user. They give you an overall score for the speed of your site. 

To improve the speed of your site you can compress all the images that you upload. This is one thing that will work to improve the overall site speed. You can try this and then check for yourself if the website speed has improved. 

The image file size is one of the leading causes of a slow website. If you are having problems with the speed of your site then you can compress the images. 

• Use attractive call-to-action buttons

CTA buttons that are marked with text and colour are more attractive to users. The user will pay more attention to such buttons on your site than other content. They will mostly notice the CTA before other content and this will be beneficial for your business. 

When you are creating a CTA button, you should think about the colour of the button and what it represents psychologically. Because ultimately the goal is to get the user to notice the CTA as quickly as possible. 

• Differentiate your hyperlinks

If you have added a link to your page, then you probably want the user to click on that link. It means that the link can take the user to another page that has important content. It can be an internal link or an external one. However, it is important to differentiate a hyperlink from the rest of the text. This can be done by adding underlined text and blue colour in the anchor text of the link. 

If you are adding a hyperlink to your website, you want the user to know about it because if they accidentally click on one they will be annoyed. This will ruin the whole idea of a good user experience design. 

The longer the link title is the easier it is to understand the context related to the link. Users can then anticipate what the link is about and they can imagine which type of web page will load if they click on the link. 

Adding hyperlinks is important for any website because they are necessary for SEO. However, you can add them while maintaining an optimal level of user experience design. 

If you add them randomly and leave them everywhere then it is going to create a mess out of your site’s content. You need to be able to differentiate hyperlinks and provide proper context to each hyperlink. Other than that, you should also not add hyperlinks without any relevance. 

• Divide key information with bullet points

If you write important information about your business in a paragraph, the user will get bored or lost. That is why it is important to divide the information into bullet points. This way you will have the user’s attention for a longer time. 

You can explain the unique selling proposition of your business or your products/ services. This is something that cannot be done by writing a large amount of cluttered content but it needs to be segmented smartly through the website. 

When you divide critical information with bullet points it makes it easier for the user to read. You can also cover different aspects of your business with bullet points. 

Once again you need white spaces around the bullet points to make the content more readable. If you were wondering how to improve user experience, then a combination of white spaces and bullet points generally works. 

If you want to make your website a bit more advanced, you can always use different icons instead of bullet points. These icons should be related to the content of each point. You should create your website by keeping the ideal customer in mind. It is important to convince the ideal customer by using such techniques. 

• Don’t use generic images

People are visual creatures and when your site loads they are more likely to notice the images before they read the text. If your site is filled with genuine images of your business, you will be able to win the trust of prospects and gain legitimacy. However, if you are using tons of stock photos that don’t have any connection to your business in reality then prospects will not trust you. 

While images are important for your website, using stock photos will harm the reputation of your business and are unlikely to convince a prospect to take the leap of faith. The conversion rate will fall if you use stock images. 

That is why you should use images wisely or know which image should be uploaded to which section. 

Add the image of your actual team or company. This will inspire confidence among prospects as they will feel connected with your business. They will know the team behind the work. 

If you can use images wisely, you can improve the user experience design of your site. 

Create your website strategically. Each image should have a connection with the text that is going to be next to it. It is high time that high-calibre businesses that have scope should stop relying upon stock images. 

• Add well-written and designed headings

The heading of your website is gonna be the tagline of your brand. It should be well written so that it can embody your brand. However, most people only focus on the written aspect of a heading. It also has to be well designed, so that the user can feel attraction towards the brand. 

Make sure to include important keywords in your heading and include the key message of your brand. Think about what your brand is about and then do keyword research. Then you should be able to come up with a heading for your brand. 

Search engines give a lot of importance to headings over long-format content. So, it is important to give a lot of time to writing and designing headings.

Headings are important for user experience design because they help the user to navigate the website. You can tell what the content is going to be about by reading the heading of a section. It also helps search engines crawl your website. 

• Give your website an identity by keeping the design consistent

Your prospect browses a lot of websites throughout the day. You need to ensure that they know they are on your site when they are browsing it. Create your website by keeping heading sizes, fonts, colours, button styles, design elements, and photos consistent. No matter which page you are on, there should be something that can give the hint that the user is still on your website. 

Drastic design changes from one page to another can confuse the user. They may think that they have accidentally lost your website. At the end of the day, your website is also a part of your brand. You need to maintain a sense of consistency with the brand tone and the website’s design. 

If a page of your website seems different from the other pages, then prospects are likely to leave your website after they reach that page. All because they will feel confused. 

Do not make any drastic changes in design in the midst of designing a website. 

• Get rid of the 404 links

It is normal to have a few 404 links after some time. Some of your backlinks will stop being valid after some time. This is something that you will have to track. If a user clicks on a link, they expect that it will take them to a certain page. If it does not lead them anywhere, they are more likely to quit the browser instead of returning to the site. 

404 links are not harmful to your SEO but they are extremely disruptive in the customer journey. If a user clicks on a 404 and the page is loading slowly, they may think that your site is simply not functioning anymore. This will lead them to think that your site is slow and cannot be trusted. They start doubting your site and your brand. 

If you have been questioning, how to improve user experience? Then the first thing you can do is track all the 404 links and get rid of them. This will ensure that everything on your site is working well. Each link and image will lead the user to a certain page. 

You can set up Google webmaster tools on your website and check for any crawling errors. There are also other tools like Ahrefs which can provide a detailed report of each link on your website. You should keep checking the links on your website from time to time. 

• Ensure that your site is responsive and mobile friendly

Technology has evolved a lot in the last two decades. Users have become more mobile-friendly and they are making all sorts of decisions while being on the go. Websites have evolved while keeping the modern consumer in mind. That is why each website is designed by keeping the desktop user in mind and keeping the mobile user in mind. The majority of your site users will be using a mobile phone. If you are not making your site mobile-friendly, then you are cancelling a large base of potential customers. 

Whenever you finalize any design changes, you have to ensure that it works for desktop and mobile both. Your website should be responsive, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate. 

Google has started to penalize sites that are not mobile-friendly. It is a cliche thing to say but Google rankings are based on user experience. If a site is ranked first then it means it is providing a superior customer experience to its users. 

Most website builders can help you design a site that works on desktop and mobile both. Most of the sites are expected to be mobile-friendly, this is not an advanced thing anymore but the least someone can ask for. 

Conclusion

The tips in this blog post will help you improve the user experience of your website drastically without flushing money on a complete redesign project.