88 percent of consumers won’t return to a website if they have a bad user experience.
As that sinks in, it becomes clear that user experience is king, especially when you’re running an online business where customers have to come to your website.
The big question is: what kind of experience are you offering the end users of your digital infrastructure, such as business websites and customer portals?
End user experience can make or break your business. You obviously don’t want it to break your business, so you need to do what you can to improve user experience.
In this article, we’re telling you how to improve user experience.
Let’s get into it!
1. Ensure Your Website Has a Responsive Design
A decade or two ago, desktop computers were the exclusive way to access the web. Naturally, all websites were designed for desktop browsing.
These days, desktops aren’t the only way to access the web. In fact, over 60 percent of online traffic now comes from mobile devices. This means your website needs to be accessible to users regardless of the devices they’re using to access the web. If it’s built for desktops only, you’re not only hurting the end user experience but also its search engine ranking.
Does this mean you need to build a desktop and mobile website? You can do that, but there’s a simple, more efficient solution. You just need to implement a responsive design. With this design, the site’s display automatically adjusts to the user’s screen size.
2. Website Security Matters
Even your website fully loads on the user’s device, one of the first things they’re going to see is whether it has HTTPS encryption or not. Web browsers make it easy to spot this detail.
In fact, if your site isn’t secured, most web browsers will label it as insecure and warn the user about proceeding to the site. When this happens, it won’t matter whether your site doesn’t have any malicious intent. As long as it’s insecure, most users won’t want to risk accessing it.
If it’s an ecommerce website, you can imagine the number of potential customers you’ll lose. To secure your site, one of the things you need to do is purchase and install an SSL certificate to your domain.
In addition to HTTPS encryption, ensure your site’s plugins are genuine and up-to-date and that you’re using a secure web host.
3. Blazing Fast Site Speed
Did you know 53 percent of site visits are abandoned if a site takes longer than 3 seconds to load?
Yes, 3 seconds!
If that sounds like a short time, it’s probably because your site takes longer to load. You aren’t doing your business any favors if that’s the case.
It’s not impossible to build a site that loads that quickly, however large it is. You just need to optimize it properly.
Avoid using heavy images on your site, ensure your web host is reliable, and choose a hosting plan that suits the needs of your business.
4. Ensure Your Website Is Easy to Navigate
Ever visited a website that made you feel like you were in a massive airport that you aren’t familiar with? If yes, chances are you left the site. And if you had to be there, you probably swore to never return again.
A website that isn’t easy to navigate will frustrate users and hurt their experience. You want your site to offer fluid navigation. User should easily find their way around regardless of where they landed.
Simple features such as enabling a user to return to the homepage with one click go a long way. A navigation bar is just as important and it’s should be clearly visible. Important pages (besides the homepage) should be easy to find.
5. Maintain a User-Friendly Website Design
The design of your website is like the design of a brick-and-mortar store. Ideally, you want a site design that’s inviting and eye-catching.
Website design trends come and go, but one thing never changes: minimalistic designs. You don’t want a business website that feels cluttered. Most end users hate clutter and are likely to browse away from your site if doesn’t have a user-friendly site design.
While still on design matters, when did you last give your site a design refresh? Refreshing your website is akin to giving your walls a fresh coat of paint.
If it’s been forever since you updated your website’s design, it might have become too monotonous for your regular users. A design refresh, as long as it’s done correctly, will give them a fresh reason to visit your business website.
6. Collect and Act on User Feedback
There’s only so much you can do to improve the end user experience if you don’t know what the end users would like to see and feel. This is why it’s super important to collect end user feedback and use it to improve the site.
So, how do you collect this data?
You can use end user monitoring software. The software will study the behavior of your site’s users, collecting data on various metrics, such as the time users spend on various pages. Be sure to learn more about end user monitoring for deeper insight.
You can also run surveys via email or social media.
Offer the Best End User Experience
Your online business is only as good as the experience its end users enjoy.
Yet, end user experience isn’t a destination. There’s something you can do to improve it and ensure your users are satisfied. With this guide, you now know the various you can take to improve end user experience.
Keep tabs on our blog for more helpful tips and insights.
