7 Simple Principles of Website Design That Impact User Experience
7 Simple Principles of Website Design That Impact User Experience
Can you remember the last time you visited a website and got frustrated because it was difficult to use? Maybe the text was too small, there were too many menu options, or you had to pinch the screen to use the navigation buttons on your smartphone.
All of those annoying memories are down to poor user experience (UX). If your website is confusing or hard to use, your visitors will get frustrated and bounce. That’s why user experience is so important in website design.
In this post, we’ll walk you through 7 key principles of UX. Make sure your website sticks to these fundamentals and provides an intuitive experience for your website visitors.
Let’s dive in.
Navigation – Don’t Make Users Think
One of the most important considerations for website designers is eliminating as many question marks as possible – the decisions that users actively need to make.
Nowhere is this more important than your website’s navigation. If it’s hard for users to work out how to find their way around your website, it raises a big question mark. Instead of focusing on your offer or content, users are forced to think about getting from point A to point B. They’ll get frustrated, and they’ll leave.
You can improve your website navigation by:
- Using descriptive labels in your menu
- Limiting the number of menu options
- Putting your navigation menu in a standard location
- Making hyperlinks stand out from the surrounding text
- Enabling internal search functionality
The goal of your website navigation is to help users find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. Don’t make your visitors think. The more they have to think about using your site, the less they will engage with your offers and your content.
Keep It Simple – Limit the Number of Choices
The more options that you provide, the more you risk confusing or frustrating your users.
Hick’s Law is a psychological principle that is vital to website design. The law states that the more choices you provide, the longer it will take for a person to reach a decision.
If you give your visitors dozens of options to choose from, you force them to think about each one and decide what to click on.
For example, if you include every product you sell in your navigation menu, you’ll overload visitors with information.
One of the simplest ways to limit the number of choices is to group content and products into relevant categories. This limits the number of decisions users need to make and reduces the time it takes for users to find what they are looking for, improving the usability of your website.
Be Conventional
According to Magicdust, highly experienced in website design Sydney wide, being conventional with your website design doesn’t make your site boring. On the contrary, it makes it easier to use and improves the user experience. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be if every website had a unique navigation system?
There’s always a learning curve when a user lands on a website. However, when your site looks and responds like websites the visitor has used before, it flattens the learning curve.
There’s plenty of ways you can make your website unique, but you should stick to the main conventions of website design. For example, think about the huge range of different car designs. A Lamborghini and a Ford look different and feel very different to use, but they both adhere to the main conventions of car design – four wheels, steering wheel, etc.
Accessibility
Accessibility is an integral part of user experience. Your website needs to be easy for people with disabilities to use.
For example, your choice of website design colours can significantly impact readability and usability for people with colour blindness. According to Colour Blind Awareness, 1 in 12 males and 4.5% of the total global population are affected by colour vision deficiency. That’s a big chunk of your audience.
Use high contrast between your text and background colours, add captions to your video content, and include descriptive alt text for your images to improve accessibility.
You can find out more about website accessibility by visiting W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Your website is designed for people to use, so it’s vital that it is accessible to as many people as possible.
Less Is More
Less is more is a website design principle that can be an effective way to improve the user experience of your website.
One of the most important ways to use this principle is white space.
White space is the blank area between different website design elements on a page. Leaving white space provides a natural flow that helps users navigate the content and focus on the most important elements.
Google’s homepage is an excellent example of a minimalist website design that utilizes a less is more approach to improve the user experience. The search function is the most important element on the page. Everything else, apart from the Google logo, is eliminated or placed in the menu options in the corners of the screen.
Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy is a website design principle that involves changing the visual characteristics of different elements to indicate their order of importance.
For example, your CTA button is usually the most important element on the page. You want to ensure that it gets more attention than the less important elements.
Amazon uses a strong visual hierarchy on its product pages. The “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart” buttons are two of the most prominent elements. This increases the chances of conversion, but it also improves the user experience by helping users accomplish their goals faster.
Strategically altering the appearance and layout of elements can make your website easier to use and help visitors quickly find what they are looking for.
Scannable Content
Internet users rarely read every word when viewing a web page. According to a study by Nielsen Norman Group, 79% of people scan every new page they visit, with only 16% reading text word-by-word.
To improve the UX of your website, you need to make your content easy for users to scan. You can make your content scannable by:
- Using descriptive subheadings
- Keeping sentences and paragraphs short
- Using lists and bullet points
- Breaking up text with images and multimedia
- Incorporating plenty of white space
Making your content scannable helps your users to read your content and find the information they need.
Conclusion
Incorporating the above UX principles will improve your website design and make it more enjoyable for your visitors to use. However, once your site is optimized and live, you need to see how your real-world visitors use your site and if they engage with your page elements the way you intended. You can use heatmaps and other tools to gain insight into on-site user behaviour.
UX is a key consideration of website design. By making your website easier to use, you increase the chances of your visitors engaging with your content, converting on your offers, and purchasing your products and services.
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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6 Influential Ways Web Development Impacts Your Marketing Strategy
6 Influential Ways Web Development Impacts Your Marketing Strategy
Web design is at the heart of marketing strategy. Your website is the first interaction with your business for most customers looking to find out more about your products and services, check your opening hours, or make a purchase.
Your website design directly impacts how potential customers perceive your business and make purchasing decisions. If your website doesn’t look good, is hard to use, or fails to inspire trust, you’ll struggle to get positive ROI from your marketing initiatives.
Here are 6 ways that web development influences your marketing strategy and why it is integral to the long-term success of your business.
1. The First Impression
It takes less than 1/10th of a second for a visitor to form an impression of your website and decide whether to stick around or bounce. It’s not your content, your products, or your pricing that influences this vital first impression. For over 90% of people, first impressions of a website are related to web design.
If your website design looks unattractive, outdated, or confusing, potential customers will have a negative first impression of your business. They won’t engage with your content, view your products and services, or click on your CTAs. They’ll go back to Google and find one of your competitors.
For paid traffic, your website landing pages influence your cost-per-click and conversion rates. Even if you have a well-targeted PPC or paid social campaign, customers will turn away and won’t engage with your business if your website makes a bad first impression.
2. Website Design Is the Backbone of the Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is a visualization of the buyer’s journey at your business. It maps out the different stages your customers go through on the path to purchase and helps you identify opportunities to attract prospects and guide them towards a sale.
You can use a variety of marketing tactics to attract and nurture prospects through your sales funnel, including:
- Pay-per-click
- Search engine optimization
- Paid social
- Sponsored content
- Email marketing
The goal of all of these marketing activities is to drive traffic to your website. A well-designed website is vital for converting visitors and making the most of the traffic you generate. If your website development is poor, your marketing spend will be wasted.
3. Your Website Inspires Trust
As emphasised by Magicdust, a web developer Sydney wide, if your potential customers don’t trust you, they won’t buy your products and services. Establishing trust is key to marketing and sales performance and one of the best ways to establish trust is through your website design.
When a potential customer is close to making a purchase or deciding between two companies, they seek advice and recommendations from people who have already purchased the product or service. They seek social proof to validate their purchasing decision.
You can implement social proof in your website design by displaying customer reviews, testimonials, and user ratings on your sales and product pages. On average, adding testimonials to a sales page will increase conversions by over 30%.
Ask satisfied customers for testimonials, and use authentic images of the customer if possible. You can also boost customer trust by displaying your star ratings and reviews from Google, social media, and review aggregators like TrustPilot.
4. Build Your Brand Identity
Your website design is the most critical aspect of your online brand identity. If you’re in a competitive market, other businesses will sell similar products and services at an equal or lower price point. Without solid branding to differentiate your company, consumer purchasing decisions typically come down to cost, and the lowest-priced product wins.
A strong brand identity makes your business memorable and different from your competitors. It influences how your customers perceive your brand and your products.
Web design is a powerful tool to help you stand out from your competitors and build your brand identity. Your logo, images, and other design elements are an opportunity to set your company apart and showcase your unique selling proposition (USP).
For example, businesses that sell high-end products often incorporate a black color scheme that connotes power and sophistication. If your USP is eco-friendly and sustainable products and services, light green and white color schemes connote simplicity, nature, and cleanliness.
5. Search Engine Optimization
Web development has a significant impact on SEO. Your design choices influence how Google and other search engines crawl and index your website. If you want to rank high in search results and drive more organic traffic to your website, your website needs to be SEO optimized.
Web development influences SEO in several ways, including:
Mobile-Friendliness
If your website design isn’t responsive or optimized for mobile users, you could be ignoring the needs of over 50% of your visitors. When your visitors bounce due to poor mobile experience, it sends a negative signal back to Google, and you could drop down the rankings.
Content Readability
Poor web development choices can make it difficult for your visitors to read your content and explore your website. A stylish font might look good, but if it makes it difficult to read your content, it could cause your visitors to bounce and damage your SEO.
Website Speed
Slow loading pages cause visitors to bounce before they engage with your website. If you’re struggling to rank high in search results, it could be because your website speed is too slow. For the vast majority of website speed problems, a web development issue will be the cause.
6. Enhances Customer Experience
Customer experience is the sum total of all the interactions that a customer has with your business throughout the buyer’s journey. It covers every touchpoint, from PPC ads and content to product packaging and customer service.
Focusing on your customers’ needs throughout the buyer’s journey can significantly impact your bottom line. Companies that prioritize customer experience are on average 60% more profitable than companies that don’t.
Web development plays a vital role in customer experience. When your website navigation is intuitive and makes it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for, it makes a positive contribution to the experience of buying from your company.
A user-friendly website design makes it easy for people to find the information they need. According to a report by KO Marketing, when people land on a business website, 86% want to find information about products and services, and 64% want to see contact information. If your website is challenging to use, visitors will get frustrated, and customer experience will suffer.
Conclusion
Website design is integral to marketing strategy. Your website is where you send your paid and organic traffic. If it fails to make a good impression, inspire trust, or generate conversions, your marketing activities will be wasted.
If you’re not getting the results you think your marketing campaigns deserve, web design could be the issue holding you back. Taking time to make your website user-friendly and conversion-focused will help you maximize marketing ROI and fuel the growth of your business.
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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