With every man and his dog having a website on the internet and the average attention span of a reader being close to a goldfish, it can be difficult to make your site feel different and compelling.
Luckily for us, not all these websites are built with user intent in mind; this is where we have the advantage. With specialist User Experience (UX) design we are able to make sure that our websites have what it takes to guide the users to their destination.
What is User Experience?
According to Medium; User Experience, more commonly known as UX, can be defined as the way people’s emotions and attitudes are affected when using a particular product, system or service. Additionally, it includes a person’s perception of the systems aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency.
We are going to be investigating what users, companies and our own team thinks contributes to being the most valuable aspects of creating a great user experience on a website or landing page.
The Journey
Most people will agree that getting to your destination is great but it’s the journey that you remember. The same applies to websites. Having a direct, simple to follow and adventurous journey is all part of the fun when on a website.
When it comes to creating and developing a good user journey it would help to know things such as where your customers go when on a website, whether they are operating on desktop or mobile, if they want to find a particular service or browse a range of products and so on and so forth.
We would recommend some tools such as Google Analytics to help see what operating system your users are using and Hotjar to help determine where users are clicking on the website and where they are going.
When optimising your user journey and creating a journey map you need to remember that not everyone is computer literate and some people can easily get lost on a website. This means making your destination or end goal within 3 to 4 clicks from landing on the homepage would be sensible for everyone.
Ease of Use
When creating a website it might be worth remembering that nearly 20% of the UK’s population is 65 and over and that statistic steadily rising. Making sure these websites are clear and simple to use for both young and old people alike should be at the forefront of your mind when creating a great user experience on your website.
Using clear large headings with even larger clickable Call To Actions (CTAs) can be useful when you’re trying to funnel users to a certain destination. Use bold headings to give a clear indication as to what the page is consisting of. You may also use bold headings to direct users around your site whilst utilising CTAs and buttons to lead them to the correct places.
Having an accessibility setting of some kind on the website could go a long way as well when it comes to people with slight issues or have difficulty with reading. These settings may include a feature that increases the size of text throughout the website to help with the readability or maybe a font style change could be available to help those with dyslexia or those who cannot comprehend a hard to read font that is in use.
If your website is running on WordPress then a handy plugin to a user could be WP Accessibility.
In Conclusion
There are more aspects to take into account when designing a website for the best user experience but these are definitely the basic you need to think about, perhaps, we will continue and write a second blog on more user experience tips.
Here at Mosaic Digital Media, we know what it takes to make sure that good user experience is met with your users. If you’ve tried to make your site more engaging or visually pleasing but it’s not gone to plan, give us a call on 01925 563960 or take a look at what design work we’ve done in the past here.
