Does user experience really matter? You have a great product and a website full of detailed information. You promote your brand through social media. Maybe you even employ certain SEO services and techniques to boost your visibility on Google and Bing. What more could you need? Is it really necessary to fine-tune your website to provide a specially tailored user experience for your consumers? The answer is a resounding yes. The effectiveness of an online platform is dependent on this one key factor: user experience. To put it in the simplest of terms, customer satisfaction (or lack thereof) can make or break your business. Websites need to be accessible and easy to navigate; they must accurately represent your product in clear and concise terms that the typical internet user can understand; and they must engage your consumer on a social and emotional level.
You already know that the style and layout of your website is important. Web design, however, encompasses much more than stylistic choices like color, font, and layout. After all, it does not matter what your website looks like if your audience does not know how to interact with it. Not only do they need to know how to use it, they also need to enjoy the experience. Let’s start with simple functionality. Is your website usable? Studies show that 40% of internet users will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load. While the user’s internet connection can sometimes take the blame for slow loading time, your website may also be a part of the problem.
Next, take a look at your home page. Can you navigate your website easily and seamlessly from this starting point? Executive dashboards and customer journey mapping are the two customer experience activities that had the largest increase in focus among web designers last year. Nothing frustrates a visitor more than getting lost in the depths of a chaotic website, stranded on one page without a clear path back to the relevant information that brought them to the site in the first place. Finally, does your website engage your target audience? Before you begin the design process, consider how you want your visitors to feel when they interact with your web content.
Also, consider who makes up your intended clientele. Are they more likely to respond to humor, sympathy, beauty, or maybe even shock factor? When you design a website, you are building an entire experience. Never forget that. A whole 90% of web design customer experience decision-makers believe that a good experience is critical to their success; 63% think that the importance of the customer experience has increased in recent years. With statistics like these, you would be wise to heed this advice and step up your website’s user experience.
