Have you ever been to a website looking for one simple thing and felt lost and confused? Clicking through page after page to find a “book online” button or contact form is frustrating, isn’t it?
Here in the industry, we call that a bad user experience—or UX to get technical.
This nightmare scenario might even be occurring on your site right now, and it could be driving away potential clients or customers.
Signs your site offers clients/customers a bad user experience
- People call or email instead of completing an action that could be done on your website.
- In GA4, your conversion rates are low.
- Your customer service team often answers questions your website could answer.
- You’ve been told “I couldn’t find it on your website.”
If any of these indicators are true for your business, you’re probably in need of an overhaul. Fair warning: This process takes a bit of time, but it will be completely worth it when you see your conversion rates (and as a result, sales) jump.
4 Steps to Bettering Your Site’s UX
1) Evaluate your information architecture
An information architecture is a visual representation of how content is organized on your website. Mapping it out will help you evaluate the relationships between pages and determine if content needs to be moved, removed, or replaced.
Start with the main sections on your navigation bar and map out all the pages housed under it. Then, think about a first-time user coming to your website. Where would they look to find the information? And once they’ve found it, is there a clear call-to-action (CTA)?
If you’re beginning a new site or are committed to a complete content refresh, you could also use the card sorting method. Often favored by web designers, this method involves writing down bits of information or ideas on individual cards and then asking someone outside your organization to sort and group them.
2) Check your Core Web Vitals
Aside from content, factors like website load time can influence your user’s experience. In fact, Google recommends your pages should completely load in 5 seconds or less to keep your audience engaged instead of frustrated.
Luckily, Google introduced Core Web Vitals that aim to identify usability issues, such as a slow-to-load site. Through your Google Search Console account, you can also view your site’s interactivity and visual stability. If you’re not familiar with these metrics or how to get started tracking them, we recommend you check out our in-depth blog.
3) Ensure accessibility
Ensuring website accessibility means making it usable for all individuals, regardless of their abilities. This is a great practice for any website, because it’s all about creating a welcoming and intuitive user experience. To do so, make sure you’re:
- using alternative text for images
- providing captions or transcripts for multimedia content
- writing clear and logical headings
- ensuring proper color contrast for readability
- enabling keyboard navigation
- checking that the website is compatible with assistive technologies (like screen readers)
Our team can even run an audit to determine how accessible your site currently is and what (if any) work needs to be done.
4) Write for an online audience
We’ve seen client websites with 10-sentence paragraphs and over a thousand words for an “About Us” section. And while it’s hard to tell them to take a hatchet to the hours of work they poured in, we have to do it—web content just has to be concise.
The simple truth is that website users are usually just looking for answers. If they are unable to find them quickly, they’ll either go somewhere else and/or resent you for making them sift around.
Our content writers recommend keeping paragraphs short, breaking up sections with imagery, and utilizing subheadings for different topics. If you need an example, just look at this blog! Informatics’ own Content Manager Adam Moore also spilled his web-writing secrets in his blog, Web Content Writing Tips from a Recovering Editor.
Need help?
Here’s the big takeaway: creating a good experience for your site users requires a lot of testing, research, and then more testing. But in today’s digitally driven world, you’ve just got to do it.
If you have questions about refining your web design or content, reach out today—we have a full team of experts who would be willing to start you off with an audit!
