Your website is essentially a shop window to potential customers, and needs to leave a positive lasting impression. It should be developed with user experience in mind, guiding them through exactly what you want them to see. User experience is all about the experience your customers have using your product. When we refer to ‘product’ we don’t just mean the goods or services you are selling, this includes the ways in which you interact with your customers before they make a purchase.
How To Improve User Experience
Now you have a better understanding of what user experience is, let’s look into detail about how you can improve the experience your customers receive.
Clearly define calls to action
Before you go changing all the buttons on your website to a new colour, you first need to think about the main action you are optimising for. Most of the time you want people to fill in your contact form so you can harvest data & qualify leads. Once you have decided on this main call to action, try A/B split testing a few different styles and the wording on the button itself.
Continually test & monitor
As with anything, try changing one thing on your website and then monitor the results. There are so many different screen capture tools out there so you can see exactly how live visitors are interacting with your website. Have a look at their browsing habits and see if you can draw any conclusions from this. If you want to go one step further, you could host user-testing days where you get face-to-face feedback on how easy visitors find your website to navigate.
Make your website responsive
Responsive website design is essential to provide the best viewing experience for visitors. Your website should be both easy to read and easy to navigate, no matter what device they are using. If they are viewing the site on a tablet, they should receive the same experience as viewing the website on a desktop computer.
Utilise tracking tools
Heat map software is really useful to install on your website. This allows you to gain insights into things like: how far visitors are scrolling down a page, how many go below the fold, where visitors are clicking, and more. You can even record individual sessions and play them back. The more information you have on visitors’ interactions, the easier it is to improve both the user experience and conversion rate of your website.
Include social media links
Sharing is caring, so make it easy for website visitors! Your social media links should be clearly visible on all pages of your website, allowing customers to interact with you directly and get a better feeling of your brand. It can also help to reach a wider audience if your visitors share blog content, for example, on their social media channels via a link you have added.
Avoid overwhelming data entry
No one has time to fill in hundreds of fields on a contact form these days, so don’t make this mistake. If you want to build on the initial data you collect, then that is fine – use things like regular email campaigns to ask them questions rather than bombarding them during the first communication.
Educate customers
Providing free information to website visitors can really help build loyalty and see you as an industry leader. Whether you give users the option to download a free e-book to educate them on your product or service (also a great data capture opportunity), or create regular educational blogs this will help improve engagement.
Trial customer surveys
Having regular communication between your customers and your customer service team is really important, and it helps to quickly identify any issues customers may be experiencing. Immediate action can then be taken to ensure nothing escalates, and don’t be afraid to ask your customers parts they like or dislike about your website too.
Interview website users
Did you know that you can send push notifications to the most active users on your website, in order to ask them questions? This is a great way to interview users and learn exactly what they think of your website. While Google Analytics can give you the quantitative figures, nothing beats true feedback from humans.
Add language translation to your website
One really important way to improve your website’s user experience is to provide language options upon arrival. Communicating with users in their native language gives a much more seamless experience, and also helps to build brand credibility.
So there you have it, 10 ways to improve your website’s user experience. Although it can feel like quite a daunting task, if you break it down into these key steps you will see a huge difference. If you would like more information on this topic, feel free to contact the experts at DBS Digital today.
