In the modern-day marketing arena, your website has turned into a powerful tool. It is a 24/7 salesperson. Apart from that, it also has the potential to be the most powerful asset for your business and the centre of your marketing campaigns.
However, things like quickly changing digital trends can leave your website feeling outdated and dusted. While a redesign might be a great option sometimes, you may not have the money and time to invest in a project as significant as this.
To help you overcome such a challenge, this article is there for you. In this article, you will explore the top tips for web design that will help you boost your website’s user experience to a great extent.
Top Web Design Tips That Will Boost the User Experience Quotient in Your Website
It is evident nowadays that a website is the core anchor of digital marketing campaigns. To design and develop a great website, you need to understand the problems different visitors and users have to deal with.
Apart from that, here are some essential tips that will help you improve the user experience on your website:
● Utilize White Space:
Many times, a lot of website owners complain about excess white space, as they think it isn’t used or not utilized to their satisfaction, as, according to them, white space can be used to place advertisements.
However, white space is important for a great web design in Toronto. It makes your content readable and enables the user to pay more attention to elements that surround the text.
According to research, white space around text and titles boosts user attention by 20%. White space can also make your web design feel open, modern, and fresh. Plus, if your branding is consistent with these things, it will help you effectively communicate your message to the user.
At the same time, there is one downside to white space, which is evidently the fact that it takes up space if you are trying to get a lot of content above the part that is immediately visible without scrolling, having an excess amount of white space can result in the replacement of content with valuable information.
Yet, it is important to find the right balance between what’s essential and some space where you can highlight the text or image. In some websites, there’s a lot of white space right from the beginning, which will pull your attention to what the business looks like and what it can do for you.
This way, you can allow the users to focus their attention on the most important things.
● Optimize the Loading Speed:
One of the most frustrating things that every user has to go through is waiting for a page to load for too long. As the number of mobile phone users is on the rise, people are also accessing content all around the world on various other platforms.
Whether a user is browsing online at McDonald’s or using a website on their laptop while watching a sitcom on their TV, they will definitely expect the content to show up within one or two seconds.
When they don’t see it on their screens, they will definitely bounce. Slow page loading speeds interrupt users while they are extracting content. It can also be a source of frustration. Furthermore, users don’t have the patience to wait.
Research tells that an extra five seconds of page load can result in a 20% rise in bounce rates. It can be really detrimental to your online growth.
Well, if you want to boost your page’s loading speed, Google is there to help you out. The Google Page Speed Insights is a great tool that will help you analyze the loading speed of your website and suggest changes that will dramatically increase the loading speed with effect.
In addition to that, you need to compress all your images and videos before loading them onto your website. Image file size is one of the leading reasons for slow page loading speed.
For that, you can use compressing tools available online, which will allow you to compress your images and videos without compromising on the quality front. This further allows you to keep a low bounce rate on your website.
● Use Engaging Call-to-Action Buttons:
Your customers are already the ones who follow visual cues to understand the content that is important to them. Calls to action that are clearly signified with an action word will help your website users navigate your website more conveniently.
Users will also get what they are exactly looking for in the location where they expect to discover it. Plus, while creating an action button for your website, you need to think about the colour and psychology.
Different colours evoke different types of messages. That’s why you need to think about the message you want to convey to a user(experience, trust, or intelligence) and select your colours wisely.
Secondly, you need to consider the actual set of words you would write on the CTA button. The words should include an action word that will encourage the user to do something.
Selecting the appropriate words or psychological triggers is highly analyzed by the level of emotional recognition that specific words prompt. If there’s no emotional connection, it implies zero action. That’s why you need to make your words bold, time-relevant and action-oriented.
● Utilize Hyperlink Differentiation:
When you implement a link to any page, you are guiding a user to click there. That’s why you need to make sure that the links are easy to recognize through visual cues. Underlined and differently-coloured texts are capable of drawing the attention of users, letting them know that they can click on the link.
According to a study, regular web users see blue and underlined text as links and proceed to click on them. Understanding user expectations and what they already know about these things is essential for crafting a better user experience.
When it comes to the differentiation of hyperlinks, you don’t have to go the other way. You just need to stick to the conventional methods, which will help you achieve more success.
The best way to test the effectiveness of your links is to blur and remove the colour from the design and see what stands out. Also, when you’re hyperlinking, you need to consider the length of the hyperlink. The longer the title, the easier it will be to recognize the hyperlink.
● Segment Essential Information With Bullet Points:
Through bullet points, the users will be able to get all the information they need quickly. Whether it’s benefits, different ways or methods, or many other things, you get to solve their problems and explain the key features easily within a short time span.
What’s more interesting is the fact that you get to make your propositions more engaging, allowing your users to get the information they want. Furthermore, you don’t need to go ahead with a traditional format to convey your message.
As there are a lot of cool icons available online, you can also get creative with your bullet points and help the user further understand with images that showcase your point.
By doing so, you will be able to isolate the most essential points you’re trying to make without getting too caught up.
● Use Images:
Multimedia is definitely a powerful tool that can further take the user experience on your website to the next level. However, you need to make sure that the images you’re using on your website aren’t generic and give a hint of what you do in an effective manner.
Use professional photography to click pictures of your products and services, and share them on your website, which will help you build trust and authority. Websites using generic, stock images tend to lose trustworthiness and authoritativeness.
● Add Professionally-Designed and Written Headings:
The headings and content on your website should be driven by what your potential users are looking for. Including keywords in your title is also essential for targeting your message and attracting the right audience for your business.
Search engines usually give headings more prominence over other content. That’s why you need to select the right heading and make it stand out. It will significantly improve your search ability.
Most importantly, the headings should guide the users through the site, making it easy for users to scan through and find content that speaks to them in a direct manner.
● Keep Your Webpages Consistent:
Consistency implies making everything match. Font choices, heading sizes, colours, button styles, design elements, styles of illustrations, photo choices, etc. Everything should have the same theme, which will make your website content stand out and coherent between pages and on the same page.
To provide your user with an exceptional user experience while they explore your site, it is essential that they know they are still navigating through your website. Dramatic design changes from one page to another can make your user confused and lose trust in your website.
The user will ask themselves if they are in the right place while exploring websites with inconsistently designed webpages. This also prompts them to leave your site. Design inconsistencies will lower the quality of products and services you’re providing, according to every user.
● Catch and Correct the 404 Errors in Your Website:
Whether search engines penalize you or not for your 404 errors, users will. When a user approaches an image or link, they are expecting the link to take them to the next place they wanted to go.
In simple terms, encountering a 404 error page will leave your user annoyed, making them rethink spending their time on your website. As compared to slow loading times, running into 404s is another highly annoying thing for a user. It completely disrupts their journey through a website.
To check out these things, you can set up Google Webmaster Tools on your site and check crawl errors. Additionally, you can also ensure that when your user lands on a 404 page, it offers them an option to get back to your website.
● Ensure Responsiveness and Mobile-Friendliness:
Technologies are advanced to meet the needs of customers who are using mobile phones for shopping. Websites are also an important part of this evolution. It is important for your website to be responsive to different screen sizes and mobile-friendly.
Your website should be easy to navigate, no matter what kind of device they use to explore it. Furthermore, Google has been penalizing sites that are not optimized for mobile phones in recent times. This makes mobile-responsiveness further essential.
This is probably the single most valuable way that will help you boost your website’s usability.
Why User Experience is Essential for a Website’s Online Success?
● Improved User Engagement:
A well-designed website with intuitive navigation and engaging content will keep visitors interested, encouraging them to explore and surf your website further.
● Improved Customer Loyalty:
A smooth and satisfactory user experience will leave customers happy, increasing their likelihood of returning back to websites and becoming loyalists for your brand.
● Increased Conversions:
A well-designed website makes it convenient for users to find what they want and complete their desired actions, such as making a purchase. This directly boosts conversion rates.
● Boosted SEO:
Search engines are known to prioritize websites that offer a positive user experience, including aspects like mobile-responsiveness and site speed. These elements directly influence SEO rankings.
● Positive Brand Perception:
A well-developed website is able to reinforce its brand authority and build trust. This creates a positive association of your brand with your users.
Apart from all these things, a well-developed and designed website will always experience lower bounce rates and will be accessible to all types of users, including the differently-abled ones.
To Summarize
Web design is the most essential aspect that can help you boost your website’s user experience in a great manner. The abovementioned tips will help you improve the user experience on your website in a great way, which will further help you boost your rankings and visibility in a better manner.
Chris Mcdonald has been the lead news writer at complete connection. His passion for helping people in all aspects of online marketing flows through in the expert industry coverage he provides. Chris is also an author of tech blog Area19delegate. He likes spending his time with family, studying martial arts and plucking fat bass guitar strings.