How many times have you visited a website only to be frustrated by a slow load time? What’s your user experience like when you click a link on a site only to be taken to an error page? These examples and more can cause potential customers to leave your site and never come back.
In this age of digital marketing, it’s imperative to have a website the performs well. This doesn’t mean it just has a high conversion rate; performance also refers to the value your site offers, as well as its navigability.
Factors That Affect the User Experience
Without a doubt, website speed is probably the biggest deal-breaker for a user. But what else affects the user experience for good or bad?
- Usefulness
- Credibility
- Accessibility
Why Website Speed is Important
According to studies on website speed, a site that doesn’t load quickly is a deal-breaker for users. An estimated 25% of users will leave a website if it takes more than four seconds to load. Additionally, if the site continues to be difficult to use, 46% of visitors will not return again.
Website speed is affected by a variety of elements, including plugins and images. The digital marketing team at Gravitate One knows how to design a beautiful and functional website without slowing it down. The experts in our Utah marketing firm collaborate with you to choose the features that flatter without sacrificing speed.
What Value Does Your Site Offer?
We all turn to the Internet for answers. How many times a day do you ask Siri or Alexa a question? If users find your website, they should find useful solutions to problems in their lives, turning them into loyal customers.
So how do you ensure your site is useful? Well, be an expert in your field! That sounds simple enough, but there are a few action items you can implement.
Scale Down Your Website
The less visually cluttered a site looks, the more credible it appears to users. Additionally, a clean, simple design will never go out of style, so you’ll always look up-to-date before users even start reading your site.
Backlink to Credible Sources
In a blog article or a landing page, you can build your value and credibility by linking to other authorities on the subject. This can be tricky, as you don’t want to send your traffic to another site and lose them. You’ll need to ensure the information you’re offering isn’t competing with you; linking to statistics from government studies or websites with “dry” content are always a good bet. This way you’re backing up your content with facts and figures, but not sending readers to a more engaging website where they’ll stay.
Make Your Site Easy to Navigate
A website isn’t useful if it’s impossible to navigate. Your site can prove its value by being easy to access and use.
Include a “Back to Top” button
When you scroll down a page, even just a few times, how annoying is it when you have to scroll all the way back to the top? You can eliminate this by including a button that zips users right back to the top of your page with one tap.
Make your menu a “sticky” header
One way to make a site easy to navigate is by making the header sticky. This means that when a user scrolls down your site, the menu options stay available at the top of the screen, making it simple to head to another page without having to scroll back up.
Include page breaks
A site’s value can increase when it’s easy to scan. Use a variety of headers, bullet points, and images to break up your text. Users can find what they’re looking for more easily if the website doesn’t just include a virtual wall of text.
Make your website searchable
If your menu doesn’t have a direct link to what a user is looking for, include a search bar on your site. This allows a user to enter a few keywords to be directed to the information they want.
Include a call-to-action (CTA) on every page
A call to action is something on your site that asks the user to do something. Examples are as follows:
- Link to a “Contact Us” page
- Invitation to learn more about the company via an “About” landing page
- Opt-in for newsletter
- Links for downloads
- Navigation to related pages or blog articles on your site
These are just a few examples of how you can increase the usefulness and accessibility of your website. Our digital marketing team is happy to explore other options with you as well.
How To Gauge the User Experience
Thankfully, you can analyze your website traffic. A program like Google Analytics can tell you how people are finding your site, how long they are staying, and what pages they are reading. The digital marketing team at Gravitate One uses the following data and more to generate strategies for improving your website performance:
- Pageviews
- Bounce rate
- Conversion Rates
We can also help you test your website not just on computers and mobile devices, but in different browsers as well. Knowing how the website looks to users, what keywords are bringing people to your site, and what pages are driving them away can help our team come up with a game plan for success.
If you have other questions about your website’s user experience, get in touch with Gravitate One.