Why Is User Experience So Important?

When designing and creating your site the UX (or user experience) is something that may be missed. There are many reasons why this could happen, from just not thinking about the end user to being too close to the design and content that you can't see the wood for the trees. Good UX is not just important for your users, but for search engines too; if they struggle to find your pages, and the content on those pages, then this will likely mean you won't perform as well.

So, how do you improve your UX? There are several ways, but below are our top three questions that you should be asking yourself:

Are you engaging your users?

If you aren't engaging your users with your website, then what's the point? You've put so much time, money and effort into your website and it isn't engaging - that seems like a bit of a waste. The key selling point for your website should be how well you engage your users and if you aren't doing that then you need to rethink the structure of your website.

Is it the text content? Are there little to no pictures, or are the pictures not eye catching enough? If a user sees a badly designed website, they're likely to click straight back off of it again. Companies that make cheap websites are likely to give you something that is also cheap looking, and many consumers will immediately be put off by this.

You want to give your users an engaging experience and this comes from a few places that you might not have thought of. Your website will need to have:

• Information that is presented clearly to the customer, that is easy to read and easy to understand
• Fast loading of not just the Home page, but every page on the site
• Design that is industry appropriate, stimulating and catches their eye

Without these three elements, your website will likely fall at the first hurdle: engaging your potential customers. If they're not engaged they won't continue onto your website, so you won't make a sale.

How can you make your site more engaging?

The design of your website should be the first thing you look at. Get an outside eye to take a look at it and give you pointers: why is it not engaging enough, what is the site not doing to attract attention? A few good ideas to look at are:

• Your calls to action; making them clear, but not overwhelming
• Your design attracting the user's attention; from the images to the overall layout of your content and even down to your navigation bar
• Optimising your website's speed on desktop and mobile

Looking at these three elements closely will certainly set you off on the right path towards a more engaging website, ensuring that the user has a better experience when looking at your site. First impressions are key.

Is your content good enough?

Making sure that your content is relevant to your brand, flows well and is easy to read is extremely important. Google needs to be able to easily find your keywords and locations within the text, but on a larger scale, your potential customer needs to be able to not only understand your content, but be engaged by it. If your content isn't engaging, as we discussed above, then no one is going to be buying anything.

Your content may be missing certain elements, such as clear benefits and calls to action. CTAs are extremely important in drawing potential customers to contacting you; if there are no calls to action, this doesn't give our potential customers any guidance to get in touch. Why would they bother when you aren't pushing them towards the contact page?

The major pitfalls of bad content are:

• Few calls to action, or none at all
• Very little content that doesn't draw the reader in
• A lot of content, but it's badly written - grammar, spelling and/or sentence structure

How can you make your content better?

Sadly, there's no quick and easy fix to making your content better. Having it re-written by a professional copywriter or SEO specialist is the best way to improve it as they know exactly what to put on your website to make it engaging, but there are a few tips and tricks you can add to ramp up the quality of your writing.

First off, making sure you get those calls to action in on every page. Usually they will go at the bottom of the page, but depending on the structure of the text, it would be best to have calls to action twice: once at the bottom, and once after your first section. Some readers won't have the time or energy to read all the way through every page, even the Home page, so it's important to capture their attention as soon as you can. Calls to action include links to your contact page, references to getting in touch with you and your phone number(s).

Secondly, adding more relevant content if you don't have a lot of text on your site. Make sure you're hitting your target keywords in your content and talking about the benefits of your product or service. It's all well and good telling the potential customer that you are the best plumber in the UK, but what will they get out of that? Maybe you do 24/7 emergency repairs, or you they will save money on their energy bills when you install your brand of double glazed windows; whatever it is, you need these as your key selling points.

Without getting an SEO specialist - just like the specialists that work at Smart Domain Group - there will be quite a lot of holes in your website's content. But, you can fill a few of these holes yourself by following the tips above.

What is your potential customer's journey?

Simply put, where is the potential customer being directed to on your website? This is less of an issue if you've hit the first two points and done your best to improve the look and functionality of your website, but if you still feel that your user experience is shoddy, this may be why.

If it's difficult for a potential customer to find their way around your site, then that's a big issue. This could be due to a complicated navigation, or just not directing them very well. Having links within the text leading to relevant pages is very important; also, as touched upon before, having links to your contact page when talking about contacting you makes sense. You always need to link to somewhere else, making sure there are no end paths apart from the Contact page.

This means that all of the content on your website will need to be written with this in mind. If you are struggling to make sales, or get people to contact you, take a look at the user's journey. Pretend you are a new customer coming to your site with no knowledge of your company, what you do, or the site's navigation. Can you get around it easily? Can you find what you want quickly? If not, why not?

Making slight adjustments and adding some links to your pages will help your site a lot.

How can you improve your user experience?

If you follow all of the tips above and adjust your website as you see fit, this should improve the UX across your site. But, this doesn't necessarily mean that it will make you the biggest brand, or give you a tonne of enquiries. Having an SEO specialist is the best way to help improve your UX, so make sure you get in touch with us to see how we can improve your website and help keep more people on your website. If you would like to get in touch with us to discuss your website, then call us today on 0800 772 0047, or get in touch with us through our contact page and we'll arrange a meeting at your convenience.