5 Tips for a Web Design With Better User Experience
Nowadays, it’s easy to take a perfect-looking, high-performance website for granted. With the amount of time people spend online searching for the products or services they need, it’s easy to become accustomed to flawless functionality. But what still sticks out like a sore thumb? A poor user experience.
Tacky graphics, dull visuals, poor navigation, and slow load times; All of these are characteristics of a less-than-stellar user experience. They are often enough for anyone to exit your website and quickly turn to your competition.
Research shows that poor user experience is one of the biggest contributing factors for consumers to look elsewhere when it comes to making purchasing decisions. Recent studies report that Web Design the first impression they make about a business, with nearly 50% admitting that poor web design hinders a company’s credibility.
But it’s more than just visual appearance. A website can look stunning and flawless, but any indications of insufficient performance or functionality will quickly cause a user to have second thoughts about enlisting a company’s services or products. Professional web design is essential for catering to your clients’ needs, generating more leads, and adding more trust and credibility to your brand.
With that in mind, here are five essential web design tips to create a better user experience for all those who visit your website.
1. Cater to Your Target Audience
Perhaps the biggest mistake most companies make when designing their website is failing to cater their design, layout, and functionality to the needs and demands of their target audience. Before moving forward with web design, the first question you should ask yourself is: Who is your website for?
If you’re a candle company that primarily sells to middle-aged women, would you want to design a website bursting with bold colors and over-the-top typography? Or would you want an appearance that’s gentle, soothing, and easy on the eyes?
Understanding what makes your preferred customer drawn to and comfortable with a website is the first step toward contributing to a more positive user experience. Age, gender, income, and interests are just some of the demographics to consider because they all have different wants and preferences when it comes to the websites they frequent.
Narrowing down your target audience will help enlighten you on which visual and aesthetic elements should be incorporated into your web design.
2. Optimize for Performance
Nothing contributes to a poor user experience more than being forced to wait for a page to load. It not only leaves a bad taste in your website visitors’ mouths but will most likely result in them clicking elsewhere and never giving your website another chance.
Studies show that adding an extra five seconds of load time to any web page can increase your website's bounce rate by more than 20%. To ensure that your website is optimized for top performance, you need to perform a web maintenance test with your website to ensure that all your design elements are firing on all cylinders.
This means testing for:
- Page speeds and load times
- Broken links or 404 pages
- Mobile response times and performance
- SEO and keyword performance
- Image or video quality
- Page size, HTTP requests, caching, image size, and more
When your website officially passes all of these performance tests, you can rest assured your website will provide a positive user experience for all those who click upon it.
3. Responsive Design for All Users to Enjoy
Did you know that 85% of people think a company’s mobile website should be as good, if not better than, its desktop or laptop equivalent? Whether you want to admit it or not, the majority of web traffic nowadays stems from mobile users.
If your web design doesn’t cater to mobile devices, you’re probably missing out on some significant business. For starters, Google penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-friendly, so if your web design isn’t well-suited for smartphone users, then you can rest assured your SEO rankings will be affected by it.
A responsive web design means making your mobile website as accessible and high-performing as possible so it’s easy for smartphone users to navigate without having to test their patience with slow page speeds.
4. Simplicity Reigns Supreme
Another common mistake a lot of companies make with web design is cramming in too many visual or graphic elements that overwhelm the user. Instead of decking your website out with over-stimulating colors or imagery, be sure to utilize whitespace as much as possible, as it’s easier on the eyes and tends to increase user attention and engagement on the specific content you want to emphasize.
You should also make your menus, navigation bars, headlines, etc., as clear, concise, and accessible as possible. Make navigation options apparent on both the header and footer of your website, and be sure to place prominent call-to-action links or buttons in appropriate places that motivate the user to take action on making a purchase or contacting your company.
The more organized and easy-to-navigate your web design is, the more satisfying of an experience your users will have.
5. Don’t Skimp On Content & Imagery
As much as you don’t want to bombard your website visitors with content or imagery, you also don’t want those design elements to be lacking. Your imagery and graphics should play off of or complement your content in a well-structured manner that captivates, educates, and influences the user accordingly.
Incorporating custom photography or videos adds more credibility to your brand, as does injecting personality and originality into the tone of your content. Even if your website is simply stunning to look at, users will sniff out any signs of stock imagery or bland content writing.
Remember: Your website is the permanent online representative of your company, so it should reflect all characteristics of your brand and business.
Professional Web Design That Caters to Your Clients
Designing the perfect website is a science that takes all your clients’ needs and preferences into account while reflecting your company’s goals, personality, and energy. At Triton Commerce, we build custom websites that are engineered to deliver positive user experiences, while generating more leads for your business. When you need professional web design services to enhance your brand and expand your online presence, contact our team!