User Experience or UX in web design refers to overall experience of any user or visitor visiting your website. A great user experience focuses on precise need of user, ease of accessing information about product or service, without any fuss or delay.
In a nutshell think of user experience similar to the customer service provided by any business or retail store. We all know when we are planning to buy a new product, we tend to focus on business and service provider that provide good customer service. Also if you are window shopping or trying few vendors to look for any product, just ask yourself how much a good customer service matter for initial connection.
Same goes with the User Experience on the web design. Selling online or promoting online does need a good user experience. Think of good user experience of your web design as a part of your online customer service.
Where to start with User Experience - Know Your Audience
So you are thinking of doing a web design or website redesign, a good User Experience strategy starts with knowing your audience. The more details you know about your audience the better strategy you can build. Just make sure you don’t design your website on mere hypothesis.
The tool I personally use and recommend is Google Analytics. It’s free really easy to use. And provides a lot of information about user activities in your website.
Some of the important stats and analytics provide by Google Analytics are:
- Audience Overview that includes data about Sessions, Page Views, Bounce Rates, % of New Users etc
- Demographics of the User
- Technologies – that include details about Browsers, Devices used to browse website
- Geographic Location of Users
- Site Speed, Site Search , Visitor Flow etc and many more
So installing and seeing Analytics provide by Google Analytics can be a very good start to know about your website and website users.
Components of Good User Experience
I had worked with several projects where overall a website goal were achieved implementing good user experiences in web design and development. Whether its lead generation, or promoting services or selling service, User Experience were critical factor of success.
Based on my experience, I am breaking down the factors of User Experiences in various segments as:
Overall Ease of Use
Precisely, User Experience, UX, is for ease of use. Visitor of the website should be able to access the content or information they are looking for without much effort.
This can be further divided into two major factors viz Visual Design and Information Architecture.
Visual Design refers to overall web design, graphic design which especially focuses on communication via design and overall look and feel of the design. It related to user via color selection, typography, position of various elements such as button, CTAs etc.
Information Architecture on other hand relates to structuring and organising of website content, and information to support usability and accessibility. Grouping the content under various categories and groups is a good strategy for Information Architecture if your website contain huge amount of content and articles.
Mobile Friendly
For past few years mobile have dominated the world of web. So if your website is not mobile friendly, good chance is that you have lost revenues or you will be losing revenue in the future for sure.
On a normal case scenario, the mobile visitor to the website had surpassed the visitor visiting website via desktop. In case if you haven’t gone mobile friendly, it’s about right time to do so.
Website Loading Speed
Who doesn’t like fast responsive services? Everybody does. Same goes in the world of web. Latest research had shown that average website user expect the web page to load within 3 seconds. Otherwise the rate of bouncing of the website is always higher.
Various factor affect the speed of loading website. It can be coding, server set up or too much content heavy website. Always make sure you find a good web developer, when working with your website.
Feedback
It’s pretty much sure delivering the product or services that is admired by all customer is pretty hard or almost impossible. What you can do is always improve to facilitate your user needs.
After going live with website, you can always make sure you get feedback from your user so that you can use them to make your website’s user experience even better.
Benefits of Good User Experience
A website well-built can be rewarding. I had chance to work with several custom wordpress development projects, where I was able to deliver customer requirements and happiness as well as good results for website on long run. These were a part of overall good user experience.
Higher Conversion
A website with better user experience always converts well. Major reason being, it provides trust to the user. Good quality website forces user to interact and get in touch. It connects with user and hence provide advantages over competitor.
Better SEO Results
With good user experiences, user stay within your website for longer period. User engagement is a part of Google Ranking Factors too.
Conclusion
If you are doing website redesign or redevelopment, make sure you include User Experience part of it. Depending upon your budget you can engage an agency or a full stack web developer. In short for long term sustainability of your website, User Experience is something that cannot be neglected.
