5 Actionable Ways to Improve your Website’s UX Design and Boost conversion

UX design is at the center of all the tricks and measures that a website employs to engage users. Quite naturally, UX design determines the audience engagement, traction and business conversion of a website more than any other factor. It is the UX design that shapes the usability, accessibility and utility of a website.

While great UX design enjoys so much importance in web projects, it is more than just eye-catchy design layout, smooth user flow and quick loading time. A great web user experience is the neat outcome of an array of factors leading to ease of use, smooth engagement and user interactions, more web traffic and more business conversions. In short, better user experience helps a brand to convert more visitors into business leads and buyers.

Let us provide here some of the tried and tested ways to enhance the user experience that any web development company will find helpful.

Create well defined CTA

Call to Action (CTA) are the actionable buttons that allow users to take actions or make meaningful interactions. These CTA buttons helps convert leads or actual business through successive steps. For example, a common CTA button such as “Start a trial” can allow users to opt for a free trial for a limited period before deciding to make the actual purchase.

Depending upon the website niche, objective and user journey, there can a wide variety of CTAs such as “sign up for update”, “ask for a quote”, “free demo”, “download the app”, “book a consultation”, “get an appointment”, “get newsletter”, “save in wish list” etc.

The CTA button must be highly contextual or fully related to the context of the page. It should clearly convey the message about the action and should easily attract the attention of the user. Most websites enjoying consistently higher rate of conversion use attractive, engaging and meaningful CTAs.

Here are some effective tips in designing website CTA buttons.

• The button must appear in a prominent place and preferably should appear above the fold so that users without much scrolling can see it.
• The CTA button colour should appropriately hold the emotion of the action and the niche and it should appear with proper contrast to attract attention easily.
• The text in the CTA should directly refer to an action that a user can take. It should not use passive expression.
• The CTA text should be short and should not consume more than 5 words.
• The CTA button should be designed big enough to help easy finger tap on any mobile screen.

Stay clear of page loading or navigation errors

Though this fault has already been an old and repeated one, glitches in page loading and errors in navigation can lead to serious loss of website traffic. While browsing, instead of coming to your intended page if you land on a 404 error page, you are likely to leave and go to another website.

Similarly, if your website page takes more than three or four seconds to load, today's users will go to some other website. According to most recent web statistics, 53% of visitors leave a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Slow loading time leads to the loss of the highest number of web traffic. But fortunately, you can repair both of these fault lines and can ensure a fast loading website with no error page.

Here below we provide some effective tips.

• Fix the 404 error by detecting the browsers and pages where thus is occurring.
• Make sure the website CMS, all the plugins and themes are up to date.
• Make sure you use a code compression tool for a leaner performance.
• Use a compression tool for all the visual files so that your website loading speed gets a boost.
• Use lazy loading technique to ensure preferential loading of the page text followed by the images and other heavier elements.

Use scannable and visually optimised content

Let us remind you that most users these days hate to read long text content and instead they like to quickly scan a text content. This is why contents helping at a glance scanning with the use of small paragraphs, bullet points, multiple heads and subheads, infographics and images enjoy better engagement, readability and traction than content lacking these elements.

Images are increasingly playing an important role in website content. They not only can give a facelift to the web content they can actually create a unique flair if used with a clear impact in mind. But while using images, it is always advisable to use authentic photographs instead of stock photos.

Here are some useful tips.

• Use small paragraphs and break the content in sections with heads and subheads.
• Use bullet points wherever you need to mention some points.
• Use variation of font type and size to give a visual flair to the content and to make portions of the content stand out from the rest.
• Use authentic images, infographics, custom designed graphics and hand-drawn images meaningfully within content.
• Ensure optimum readability with the use of right font, size, indent and content layout.

Design more engaging and simpler web forms

How many times while filling out a web form at the time of an online purchase the form seemed to be too lengthy? Yes, this happened to too many of us and many times we simply dashed out of the website in disgust. Well, this is one of the worst ways to lose business and traffic.

According to Google the structure, length and format of web forms are likely to have a serious impact on the completion and submission of forms by the users. So, if you are serious about boosting business conversion by improving your website's user experience, this is one area that deserves maximum attention.

Here are some effective tips regarding form fields.

• If for your form you choose any specific requirement like the password length or password character, specify it beforehand.
• If the user conducts errors, the error notification should come in the corresponding field, not in the top or bottom of the form.
• There should be clear demarcation and mention about the mandatory and optional fields.
• Maintain a simple form format with minimum fields.
• Allow auto completion of fields wherever possible.
• Allow social login to fill up forms wherever applicable.
• Always offer users to save data for future logins.
• Always thoroughly test the form and evaluate the difficulties and glitches and submitting forms.
• It is advisable to use the headline if the form as a CTA. This will help you garner more conversion.

Driving clear objectives through Google Analytics

Finally, you need to track all major metrics and parameters of your website performance and user engagement to detect the shortcomings and fault lines and to take steps accordingly. Google Analytics report can be used to set and create goals for business conversion.

In the admin menu of Google Analytics you can set goals for specific duration. Once your conversion goal is set you can keep track of this from time to time right from the menu itself. The best thing about this tool is that you can apply goal setting to almost anything in your website. For example, you can set a clear goal of the number of form submissions on your landing page.

Use A/B testing

Finally, all the tips and advice that we offered so far ultimately leads to A/B testing, the only effective way to judge whether your design decisions are right or not. Either you can incorporate design changes based on data driven insights furnished by website analytics or test these changes and evaluate their impact. A/B testing refers to the second approach where every design decision is presented with two options and based upon the impact you choose one.

Source: Optimizely

A/B testing is the process to evaluate each and every of your UX design decisions starting from the CTA to images to elements for high speed page loading to web forms.

Let's have a quick look at all the on-page design elements that can be subjected to A/B testing for a detailed evaluation.

• CTA button colour, contrast, size, positioning, and CTA text
• The position and number of fields in Contact form.
• Headline text of CTA in contact form.
• Images, graphics and audiovisual content.
• Content length and readability elements.
• Website page design and layout.

Conclusion

Lastly, it doesn't need much brainstorming to understand that superior web User Experience is not only about getting quality content and relevant information. However useful content and relevant information a website provides, without a pleasing and engaging presentation, they won't lead to anywhere. Catching user attention and keeping them onboard with a captivating user experience is the key to great web user experience. Most of the leading brand websites offer clear examples of this principle.

This is why it is important to go through meticulous considerations and efforts while building a website. On the other hand, coming with a great website design is not a one-time job. It involves continuous efforts and frequent updates to fine-tune and shape things to perfection.