Have you ever entered a website that, for some reason, made you want to close the window immediately? This is more common than you might think, and the reasons can be many. Sometimes the pages take a long time to load, the design is unpleasant, or we simply cannot find what we are looking for. To avoid these misfortunes it is essential to prioritize the user experience on the website.
What we consider adequate is not always the best. Everything needs to be planned and tested constantly. For this, the best option is to rely on good tools and professional experts in the area, and leave intuition aside. Want to know more about user experience on the website? Read on and check out some pertinent questions on the subject!
What is User Experience?
This term is also widely used in its abbreviated form in English: UX (User Experience). In short, we can say that it is a set of factors that positively or negatively impact the user experience with a particular object - in this case, the website. So, it is necessary to improve its usability to increase visitor satisfaction and, consequently, generate more results.
Imagine you are searching for a washing machine on Google and click on one of the results. When you enter the site, you have trouble finding the most relevant information about the product and the contact field. As a result, you will have a bad experience and will not be able to do business with the company in question.
Why is it important?
By optimizing the site taking into account the user experience, the bounce rate tends to decrease. There is no point in investing in sponsored ads or other strategies to attract traffic if you cannot retain the audience. Only when users start interacting with elements of your website can you achieve your marketing goals, such as conversion rate.
What Are the Best UX Practices to Apply to Your Website?
The first thing you should keep in mind is that elements should be organized in a logical way. Highlight the most important items and avoid the famous visual clutter remember that maxim: less is more. Now that that's clear, here are some UX best practices for your website:
- use contrasting colors to highlight elements;
- choose a legible font that is not too small;
- include a search field on the site;
- Pay attention to the loading time of pages;
- test and monitor the site constantly.
How to Map User Behavior?
Knowing the user's main difficulties and their behavior on the website is indispensable for you to be able to offer the best experience. One of the simplest methods, in which no software is required, is observation. All you have to do is get some volunteers, ask them to perform some actions on the site, and observe. It is crucial that you do not give any help in this process.
Of course it is not feasible to do this face-to-face test every time you want to analyze user behavior, so it is recommended to use Google Analytics. Through GA, you can find out which pages have the highest bounce rate, the path users take on the site, where the highest number of conversions occur, etc., i.e., a lot of valuable information.
However, if you want richer data to enhance your strategy, a heatmap is the best option. With it, you can see where on the site there was more interaction. If you want to prioritize a certain element and notice that it is in an area that receives little attention, for example, you can transfer it to a warmer location according to the map.
Therefore, to improve the user experience on the website you need to study the best strategies and analyze how the audience is behaving. By applying UX techniques, besides getting more results within the site, search engines see these actions with good eyes and this contributes to your site being better positioned.
Want to know more about the importance of user experience on the site? Read our other article on the subject!
