The modern online consumer is a tricky beast to please. In the olden days, businesses could get away with a multitude of sins when it came to the design of their websites, but as time has gone by, certain standards have arisen.
Ultimately, if your visitors don’t like the online experience you are giving them, they will look elsewhere. And if your bounce rates are huge, and your page view numbers are uninspiring, it’s a sure sign there is something wrong with your site’s user experience.
In today’s guide, we’re going to take you through a few quick wins that can make an instant impact on your website, improving performance and developing better engagement rates. Let’s take a closer look.
Navigation
How easy is it for your website visitors to navigate their way around your site? If you have complicated menu bars, dozens of different pages, and messy, cluttered sidebars and widgets everywhere there is a good chance you are scaring away the vast majority of your customers. Keep things as clean, simple, and fresh as possible, eliminating any unnecessary headers and widgets, and you should see an instant improvement.
Improve your page load times
You only have a few seconds to make an impression on visitors to your website. And if your site takes forever to load, you can’t expect people to hang around staring at a blank screen. There could be a number of things wrong with your site, from large images taking an age to load through to lots of junk files slowing things down in the background. Make sure you are choosing a fast web host, too – it can make a huge difference. Finally, the more widgets and plugins you have on your site, the slower things will load – so take the advice outlined above and remove everything other than what is entirely necessary.
Logging in and checking out
If you require your customers to log in, make sure you make it as easy as possible – but also ensure you are keeping their details safe. An email address and secure password are all you need, and you can also think about ensuring that if your visitors put in the wrong details, you don’t return them to a blank field, so they have to fill in everything again. Be careful with your checkout process, too. A long and drawn out checkout is one of the biggest factors behind shopping cart abandonment, so ensure the experience is as smooth and straightforward as possible.
Clarity
Finally, it’s time, to be honest – does a visitor know what you are selling or discussing as soon as they land on your homepage? Clarity is a huge issue online, and you would be surprised at the number of businesses that say a lot without getting to the point. Don’t forget, you only have a few seconds to attract people’s attention, so your message needs to be a clear, accurate, and short explanation of what you are about. Make your home page as simple as possible, too – overcomplicating it can confuse your visitors, and you don’t want to overload them with information.