If you’re thinking about building your own website and a successful one at that, you will need to ensure that it consistently attracts and retains the right amount of traffic. With new websites springing up every day, you will need to channelize your efforts towards providing your visitors with a memorable experience that sticks with them and makes them want to come back to you.
UX or user experience is the overall satisfaction that a client derives after using a product, a service, or a system. When people visit your website, they look forward to a pleasant user experience, which is why you need to work on enhancing its design and quality. Website ratings are based on the kind of UX provided to users.
When people visit your website, they look forward to a pleasant user experience, which is why you need to work on enhancing its design and quality
Apart from a user-friendly design, other factors such as the layout of the website, the content structure, its colors, the navigation style, the fonts, and the buttons also influence the UX. If you want to create a grand UX for your website, you will have to create a design that harmoniously aligns all these factors.
Although many websites provide us with an incredible UX, there are some that miss out on certain elements and don’t quite make the mark. In order to create a pleasant UX, you will need to be mindful of the following –
Improve the Speed
Want to keep your visitors engaged and coming back for more? Then increase its loading time and make it faster! Think of the number of times you abandoned a website page just because it took ages to load. Remember, not everyone has the patience or the time to wait for a slow page to fully load.
You can enhance the speed of your website by minimizing the number of plug-ins and eliminating the use of flash files as these increase the loading time considerably. Cache the information on your website so that it doesn’t need to reassemble itself every time it is accessed.
Use Pertinent and Compressed Images
Using high-quality, compressed and supporting images has two purposes –
- A picture speaks a thousand words. So supporting your text with relevant images is extremely beneficial in beautifying the webpage and getting the message across to the audience.
- Compressing/resizing large image files will reduce the number of bytes on the page, making it light and enabling it to load faster.
Add Icons for Ease of Use
A website that is easy to use has a higher chance of attracting and retaining traffic as compared to one that makes the visitor work hard.
Adding clickable icons to your pages will help you achieve this. Make sure you add icons that link/direct users to other pages of interest on each page.
For example, after navigating through a number of pages, your visitor might want to return to the Home page. He can certainly keep clicking the ‘back’ button until he reaches there, but that is not convenient. Instead you should incorporate a ‘Home’ icon on other pages which ensures convenience for your users.
Similarly, having dedicated icons for other supplementary information like contact details, posts and articles, news and updates, search bar, and basically anything that aids website navigation is a must.
Unclutter
While text and images are good for enhancing your website, you also need to understand that only quality prevails and useless information always fails. This is where white space comes into picture. White space refers to blank spaces in a website (which may not necessarily be white in color).
White space helps you unclutter as opposed to overload your webpage with unnecessary matter. Apart from that it heightens the importance of the points you want to highlight. It is advisable to surround the key elements of your website with enough white space so that they stand out and look aesthetic.
Web Hosting Solutions
Choosing the right web hosting package can spare you a lot of trouble as far as managing website performance is concerned. The quality of the server greatly determines the website’s usability. Several server setups help you build the kind of website that your visitors want. Some offer varied benefits and complex pricing structures, others offer cheap hosting. You can also consider cloud services or high-priced full-service dedicated servers to host your website.
What You See and Hear Matters
Make sure the font size of the content on your website is neither too big nor too small, but just right and easily readable. Sizes vary as per the font. Pick a font that is easy to read like Arial, Verdana, or Calibri. Make sure the matter published is crisp, concise and easy to understand.
Use bulleted lists to highlight the main points and make them faster to skim through. The use of italics should be kept to a minimum as italicized font is difficult to read. If you want to focus on something, bolding it will be more effective. Underlined words can be misconstrued as links, which might lead to confusion. So refrain from doing so.
Avoid incorporating music that plays automatically when someone accesses your website, as more often than not, it proves to be a nuisance rather than be engaging and helpful.
Mobile Optimization
More and more people are using their smartphones to surf the Internet on the go. Additionally, in the age of instant gratification, people want information at their fingertips, accessible in seconds. It is, therefore, crucial that your website is optimized for mobile view so that it loads faster.
Social Login
Many users prefer to log in with their social network details instead of creating a new ID and password for each new website they access. If your website requires users to log in, make sure you provide them with a social login option to make the process easier for them.
Get Rid of Spam
Unnecessary and unwanted spam comments on your webpage can significantly increase its loading time. So make it a point to get rid of them on a daily basis.
Use CDN
Content Delivery Network or CDN is a large distribution of servers deployed at various locations that replicate your content and distribute on it a variety of intelligent applications employing techniques designed to optimize content delivery. When picking your CDN, do consider the speed and the bandwidth.
Conclusion
Building a successful website takes time, effort and skill. The ultimate objective of a webmaster is to create a UX that is not just visually stunning but also easy to use. The above steps should be helpful in bringing to light certain commonly overlooked considerations that are helpful in striking the right notes with the visitors.
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Kate Atmos is a freelance writer and likes to write for direct mail advertising. In her spare time, she loves to read books on spirituality.
