Techniques to Improve Your Website’s User Experience

People visit businesses’ websites with expectations. They want to have an exceptional experience the same way they would if they visited the company’s actual storefront. However, creating a memorable website user experience (UX) isn’t easy.

At Cocktail Marketing, our digital strategists know what it takes to mix up the best UX on the internet. We add a little dash of this and a couple of drops of that to give our client’s websites a strong UX their customers will remember. In this blog, we will take a closer look at the importance of UX and how you can improve your own.

Why Worry About User Experience?

Doing upgrades to improve UX on your site is an investment that comes with benefits, such as:

– Lower bounce rates. If you find people visit your website and then leave right away, it could be they find it confusing to understand and navigate or maybe it’s just dull, so they move onto the next one. A positive UX means fewer people are dropping in and bouncing out straight away. 

– Higher conversion rates. If they bounce in and then back out, they certainly didn’t buy anything or sign up for a service. Websites should bring conversions. If yours isn’t doing that, then it might be poor user experience to blame. 

– Improved brand loyalty. When someone drops in and then back out, they also have no loyalty to the brand. Businesses need customers to buy their products or services and then say positive things about them in reviews and to friends and family. A loyal customer is the best word-of-mouth advertising, but it takes a great user experience to earn that loyalty.

How to Improve Your Website’s UX

So, what will it take to reap the benefits of an enjoyable user experience on your website? Let’s see:

Clear call to action on every page

Every page should direct visitors towards what they should do next with a call to action (CTA). It could be a bright button or catchy anchor text with a hyperlink. Whatever you choose, make it eye-catching and instructive. Also, make it distinctive on each page. No wash, rinse and repeat approaches. Why? They’re not credible or engaging! Change them out a bit, so not everything says “Contact us.” 

Use your CTA wisely to get the visitor involved with your brand. For example, you might ask them to:

– Subscribe to your newsletter
– Fill out a form
– Visit a special promotion
– Learn more about the company on the about page
– Download a PDF to read about a product or a catalogue
– Schedule an appointment
– Read a blog

Users want to know more, but they are not always patient when it comes to finding information. With a call to action on every page, it becomes easier for them.

Make the design easy on the eyes Choose colours and fonts which are easy for a visitor to read. Look for contrast in colours that makes the text readable. Dark backgrounds should have light-coloured text, and light backgrounds should have dark text. 

The fonts shouldn’t be fancy and difficult to read. Choose ones which are crisp and clear so customers know what to keep reading about your brand.

Optimise your page speed Studies show if the website takes longer than two seconds to load, bounce rates double. Companies which have high bounce rates need to consider whether their website loads quickly and fully. If you find it loads slowly, look for a reason. You may need a new developer who understands the importance of compressing files and eliminating code errors. Also, extra plugins and complicated themes can slow things down. 

There are tools available to help you determine how fast your pages load, like Website Grader or Pingdom. You can also contact our team at Cocktail Marketing for website design in Australia. One of our expert website mixologists can give you information about the web design strategies we recommend.

Make it responsive A responsive website means it loads well regardless of screen size. Today, consumers don’t just visit websites from desktop computers. They use smartphones, laptops and tablets. Your website should load fast and fully on every kind of device!

Keep it scannable Scannable means a visitor can find what they need on the page fast and without reading everything. Nobody sits and reads all of the content on every webpage. They look for key details by scanning them. It’s up to you to make those details jump out so they can find them.

Don’t complicate the message Crisp, clear and concise is the key to effective UX. Studies have also found the lack of clear messaging is the number one reason people bounce from websites. Say what you need to effectively and efficiently. 

Still a little unsure? Call on the website design experts at Cocktail Marketing. We can review your current website and give it an upgrade which enhances the user experience. Or, let us work with you to design a whole new site — one to dazzle and delight visitors. We provide the perfect mix of marketing assets and have worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. 

At Cocktail Marketing, it’s always happy hour — contact us today and find out more about Sydney’s most creative marketing agency!