Taking your website UX from SUX to BUX
Taking your website UX from SUX to BUX
User experience (UX) is the most important factor to consider if you are looking to get a decent return on investment from your website.
Why? Because if people don’t like what they see, or it doesn’t move them to contact you, they’re going to do a quick click away and all the money you spent on that expensive PPC campaign or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to get them onto your website was for nothing!
So how do you get your website from a SUX (substandard user experience) website to a BUX (bankable user experience) website that will generate a consistent stream of leads for you? Below are 5 of the tops things you should be addressing to UP your UX.
1) Mobile friendliness/responsiveness
If your website isn’t mobile friendly (AKA responsive), those who are looking at it on a mobile device are not going to easily be able to navigate to different sections of your site or read the text easily. Click here to check if your website is mobile friendly.
2) Slow-loading sites
In today’s marketplace, time is money and people have so much competing for their attention that you just can’t afford to have a slow website. There’s no real excuse for this anyway as there are plenty of things you or your web designer can do to make sure that your website loads quickly. This will not only help your positioning on Google (as they use this as a ranking factor) but will ensure your prospects don’t move on in frustration.
3) Unnecessary complexity
If you can go from point A to B directly, why take a detour that just adds time to get you to your destination? The same principal applies to your website.
In an effort to be extraordinarily creative, some website owners & designers add unnecessary design elements to their sites. Each unnecessary element increases the user’s frustration as they make it more difficult for users to get the information they are looking for. Most will simply just click away and find a site that gives them the information they’re looking for quickly and clearly.
4) Lack of engagement
When people land up on your site, they are there for a purpose: to interact & engage with your business or brand.One of the ways you can improve user engagement on your site is through social media. If you have a WordPress website, adding a social media plugin like ‘social share buttons’ is inexpensive and allows them to share your content online. This helps trigger personal interactions on your site.
Don’t just limit your attempts to increase visitor engagement to social media. Think of new and innovative ways of making this happen eg: polls, competitions, giveaways. These all encourage engagement and the more engaged the user, the more likely they are to deal with your business.
5) Outdated content
A website that doesn’t look fresh is a sure fire way to result in a quick get away by users. And I’m not just talking about the look & feel. If the most recent blog post on your website was 2 years ago, or it’s evident that the last time your site was updated was 5 years ago, you’ll lose their interest just as quickly. Users are design-savvy and expect current information. They need to know that they’re dealing with a business that’s on the cutting edge in their industry.
But how do you keep things fresh for the users?
- If you have a WordPress website (or other CMS), giving it a facelift every 2-3 years is a relatively inexpensive experience. Speak to your web designer.
- Go through your website and make sure all your content is still applicable. Are you still providing all the products & services that are on it? Do you have new offerings?
- Update your blog as regularly as you can.
- Share your website content on Social media
The bottom line is this: If you don’t ensure that your website is current and that your visitors can easily find what they’re looking for, it will not generate business for you. Simple as that! If you need help with anything outlined in this article, please contact us and we can see what we can do to help you.