User Experience, or UX, is one of the most important factors when managing a website. As the phrase suggests, it covers everything that will affect a user’s experience, including the design, user interaction, customer support, and the overall value of the website.
As such, it is evident that a lot of time and effort is needed in order to have a truly successful UX design. It is more than just focusing on the colors and pictures (although these are also major aspects). There are several other aspects of user experience that tend to be underappreciated. Here we shall take a look at them.
- Constantly Updating Design
No matter if it’s the format of one page or the whole website, a huge amount of thought and effort always goes into design.
However, this doesn’t mean that it should stay the same forever. You need to review constantly, update, and modify it depending on the trends and changing preferences of your market.
This is something that most designers and developers overlook simply because it is time consuming. It requires a lot of work, but this will help keep your site’s UX evergreen. It will also help it keep up with newer sites in terms of speed and performance.
- Device Display Optimization
One thing that webmasters should remember is that the website will not only be displayed on desktops. It will also be accessed on phones, tablets, and even smart TVs. This is where another issue arises.
Since device display optimization is one of the most underappreciated aspects of UX, many users have trouble opening the website and its pages if they’re using a device other than a laptop or computer. Specifically, they can experience slower loading times, improperly displayed site format, incompatible media files, and so on, all of which lowers the quality of the user’s experience. This will ultimately lead to a more limited audience reach.
That said, make sure that you use mobile-friendly themes and plugins for your site. Encoding custom CSS will also work if you want to add your own features. If you want to make the work easier, you can use a CMS platform that will automatically optimize your website.
- Social Sharing and Contact Buttons
Many webmasters skip adding buttons for social sharing and contact forms because they don’t think that it’s necessary. This is especially common on websites that aren’t offering products and/or services.
However, they should not be overlooked. For one, it will help your site and its contents have a wider reach. It will also help you increase traffic even if you don’t personally do the work. Not only that, but you can take advantage of it to increase your brand’s presence and awareness.
- Visually-Appealing CTA Buttons
CTA, or Call To Action, messages don’t always have to be plain. You don’t have to stick to simply writing them in between your blogs and other content. Instead, try integrating visually appealing CTA buttons. You can try adding it in the form of a banner, pop-up, or footer. Whichever it is, make sure that your audience will be able to see it easily. The idea is the catch the attention of the visitor, so pay attention to colors, shape, font, and likes.
- Loading Time Alteration
Your site’s loading speed heavily affects UX. A one or two-second delay can already push your audience to exit your site and look for another one that has a better performance. Therefore, it is important not to overlook loading time alteration.
Once you have optimized your site so that it is loading as fast as possible, try to add features that will alter your audience’s perception of time. Instead of just adding a loading symbol (the one that continues to spin until the content is ready), you can add multiple progressive messages.
For example, start with “Preparing resources,” “Making sure that images are not blurry,” and so on. If there is something happening on screen, it will help to keep the user engaged. Just make sure that it goes alongside your brand’s theme, so it will seem in character.
Summary
Keep in mind that your audience should be your top priority when designing your website’s UX. You need to take their needs and preferences into account, especially when it comes to the commonly preferred color palette, website layout, content, social media platform, and likes. Of course, it is also a given that you should optimize your site’s speed and performance for as many devices as possible in order to fully provide a one-of-a-kind experience to your user. While it may sound a little daunting, there is a vast amount of material available to help you and with the right team, it can be a hugely enjoyable process.
