3 Website User Experience Tips and What is Website User Experience?

Let’s start with the second part of that title first, what is website user experience? User experience is how someone feels when they use something. So, website user experience is how someone feels when they look around a website.

As a website owner you should ensure that your visitors are having a great user experience because the better the user experience the longer they will spend on the website and the more likely they are to take action such as buying a product or joining your email list.

There are some very simple things you can do to ensure the user experience on your website is great.

How to Improve Website User Experience

Tip 1 – Make sure your website is loading quickly. One of the most frustrating things for website visitors is when they are having to wait for ages for a website to load. Some of the main culprits that cause slow page speeds are images that are too large (in file size not visual size) and videos that have been uploaded directly to the website and not embedded from somewhere like Vimeo or YouTube.

If you are unsure how well your website is performing for speed go to gtmetrix.com or Google PageSpeed Insights and type in your web address. You will then get a rating and some tips to help you improve your rating.

Tip 2 – Make sure your website is providing the kind of information your website visitor is likely to be looking for from a business like yours and that it’s easy to find.

I once went to the website of a chocolate business who I heard catered well for a range of dietary requirements which is a massive selling point for someone like me, with a range of dietary requirements. When I hit the homepage of the website there was absolutely nothing about the chocolate. Just a big long story about why the business owner had started the business and her grandfather’s positive influence on her and the business. I didn’t want to know this just yet. It’s not why I went to the website. If I’d clicked on the about page then great, I expect that but people visiting a chocolate shop website want chocolate.

Once I did find the chocolate it was hard to find details of ingredients and in the end I just gave up. It was an extremely poor user experience that I’d had and they lost a very warm lead!

So, on your home page make sure the information on there is all about what you do and how you can help your potential client or customer. Make it easy for people to find out more about your products and services and don’t over clutter your website.

Keep your menu items to eight or fewer so it’s easy for people to choose where to visit next on your website and think about the key information people need to help them decide whether they want to work with you or buy from you and make that clear on your website in an obvious place.

Tip 3 – Provide useful information as well as sales focused information. If someone leaves your website thinking “they really know their stuff” or “I can actually go away and use that” without even having to part with any money, then they are going to be really appreciative for that. They’re also going to think, “If I got that for free imagine how amazing their advice or products I can buy are!”.

These thoughts will lead them to take action and to want to come back to your website when they’re ready to buy. So having a blog on your website or a free resource to download is a great idea and make sure you give them lots of opportunities to sign up to your email list so that you can continue to nurture that relationship away from your website as well.

How to Measure User Experience

There are some easy ways to measure how good the user experience is on your website.

Firstly, if you are getting regular leads and sales through your website this suggests your user experience is on point. People love what they are experiencing and want to find out more from you or buy from you and they are managing to do that easily.

Another way to measure user experience is by checking your website analytics. Looking at how high your bounce rate is and how long people spend on each page are good indicators of how good your user experience is. If people are hanging around and browsing then that’s a tick for user experience but if they’re bouncing off quickly then there’s probably something that needs addressing on your website.

Another thing to check using your analytics are your conversion rates. If you have landing pages and sales pages on your website and people have signed up or bought things through them it’s worth comparing the number of sign ups or sales to the number of people who hit the page. I recommend looking at this monthly.

To get a percentage conversion rate divide the number of sign ups or sales by the number of people who have visited the page and times by 100. It’s felt that a 10% conversion rate for cold traffic coming to a landing page is a good average to compare your conversion rates against. If you aren’t near this then you may need to look at the experience those pages are creating.

More Support to Improve User Experience

If you would like some more hints and tips to improve user experience on your website, we have a free resource called Five Things to Improve Your Website Conversions to help you and we also have regular free workshops to help you create and amazing user experience and get more leads and sales through your website. Find out which one is coming up next here.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash