Find Out Why The User Experience Is King…

With all the different aspects of digital marketing taking up a lot of time (things like PPC, SEO and Social Media marketing). It’s easy to forget about an important factor that is easily overlooked, the (UX) user experience.

As a business working hard to drive traffic to a website, the ultimate goal is to guide that traffic to conversions of the product/service. Problems can arise when all the traffic being driven to the website is leaving after viewing one page (also known as bounce rate %). The main cause of this is poor landing page and/or website design in general, culminating in a poor user experience which makes users want to leave as quickly as they arrived.

What Constitutes A Poor User Experience?

There are many things that constitute to a bad UX. Here are some pointers that should be avoided if you don’t want a high bounce-rate:

  • Poorly designed navigation menus
  • Inconsistent structure
  • Unreadable font
  • non-relevant content
  • Little to no content on pages
  • Poor spelling and grammar

You may have come across a site before that ticks some of these boxes, maybe even all of them. But one things for sure, having the best PPC and SEO campaigns running means nothing if the UX makes you want to leave.

Making A Great User Experience

There is no right or wrong answer. One brands design and appeal might not work with driving traffic for another and so on. Here are some useful pointers:

  • Strong use of colours – Pick a main website colour that defines your brand but also fits with the theme of what you are offering. Also use secondary colours that fit into the scheme, on call-to-action buttons for example.
  • Intuitive site design – Make the user feel welcome, make them feel like they already know where everything is on the website. Clear and concise layout, use of helpful text, not too much and not too little content etc.
  • Well designed navigation menus – What are the different pages on the website, whats their purpose, are they easily accessible for the user, will the user find what they are looking for? If you can answer these questions then the website does an excellent job with navigation.
  • Legibility and readability – How easy it is for the user to read letters, words and phrases. Pick a consistent font that matches the theme of your website while also making sure it doesn’t put the user off.

One of the best examples that showcases excellent UX design is Apple. Clear navigation, strong use of colours that match their branding and clear, readable font are just some of the things that help the user to understand and make a clear choice when deciding whether to purchase an Apple product.

The Importance Great UX Design

I can’t stress enough the importance of the user experience. Imagine if you had a website and the amount of customers that have looked on it then went elsewhere after one page because of poor UX. Remember the goals of the business, then create a well designed website based on achieving those goals. A well designed user experience is always the first step to take when creating the website.

Remember, the first 10 seconds of a user arriving at a landing page on a site is the difference between turning that user into a customer or as another bounce-rate statistic, possibly leading to a bad reputation for you and the business. Don’t take a risk with the UX!

Conclusion

If you put yourself in the role of the user and visit plenty of websites for research, you will get to grips with spotting the good, the bad and probably the plain ugly of user experiences on the web.

Research, Research, Research is best the way to discover what works and what doesn’t. Keep the brand in mind when designing the site and get a good balance between graphics, navigation and readability. Once you have done that, then the serious work can begin on driving traffic through SEO, PPC and Social Media.