Web design is one of the most important things in how people perceive your business. When they get to your site, they want to see an easy-to-use interface that stays the same no matter what device they use to look at it. But there are many more things you need to think about if you want to leave a good impression and achieve great results. And to help you figure all of them out, we’ll talk about the ways web design impacts customer experience.
We’ll take you through 7 essential things and explain why you need to focus on them. No matter what marketing strategy you choose for your business, you can improve it if you follow the tips that we’ll give you today. You’ll get more people to your site, and more visitors means more conversions.
Let’s get right into it.
1. Appearance
As soon as your visitors click on your website, their customer experience begins. The goal here is to not make your first impression the last. You want to intrigue the visitors and get them to explore your site further.
Of course, you don’t have to do anything complex for the looks to work. However, you must stay up-to-date and give people what they want to see. You can’t have a website that looks like it went live in 1996 and expect someone to spend time on it.
So, here are four trends that you need to have on your site at the moment.
- Responsive Design. Your site needs to look great on all devices.
- Bold Fonts. Everything must be easy to read, so don’t pick your fonts without thinking about them.
- Interesting Images. These are here to get attention and improve retention.
- Video. Sometimes, a good video is all that a lead needs to turn into a customer.
2. Clarity
You want your visitors to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. If they can’t navigate through your site, they won’t have a nice time using it, and that’s a problem. Hence, you want to create a system that is easy to figure out and use. You want it to work intuitively, so the people get grips with it right away.
However, you can be smart here and design the navigation to your advantage. Think about leading people from your most valued and read articles right to your high converting landing pages that bring revenue. That, right there, is how you make money online. Of course, you need to find a way to make it look like your landing page is where they wanted to end up. But if you manage to do this, the sky will be the limit for you.
3. Professionalism
You can use your web design to show how professional and well-suited your business is. Your visitors will convert much more easily if you assure them that your company is reputable and trustworthy. Luckily, this isn’t too hard to do, and you need to incorporate only a few new elements.
First off, you need a culture page. It’s a place on your website where you explain your approach to daily operations and your values. Then, you have to have pictures of your staff. The visitors want to see the real people behind the company, so give them a glimpse of who you really are. And finally, share with them some of the great feedback you’ve got from your satisfied customers.
4. Loading Times
We can’t talk about the ways web design impacts customer experience and not mention the load times. In essence, the quicker your site loads, the higher your retention rate will be. Visitors will love your pages as they feel snappy, and Google will love your site because its users love it.
It’s a scenario in which everyone wins. However, to get everything to load in under three seconds (which is what you should aim for), you may have to make cuts here and there. Make your images smaller and remove auto-play from your site altogether. A video or audio should play only if a user clicks on it.
Take note of small things like these and before you hire a web designer, tell them what you want. Do it this way, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and stress.
5. Content
The way people experience content on your site also falls under web design. If you do everything as you should, what you write will always remain pleasant to the reader. You mustn’t sound negative, harsh, or rude.
Moreover, you need to be careful not to scare away the reader. Avoid things like disturbing images or getting too technical. All your posts and articles must be easy to read and understand, and the same goes for the videos as well.
6. Visibility
To put it simply: if your site is well-optimized and has a good SEO score, it will be simple to find it on Google. Your customers will only have to type in one of the keywords you rank for, and you’ll be right there. We don’t have to explain how that is good for customer experience.
As you can assume, good web design makes your site more visible, but why?
Well, search engine crawlers can understand your pages better. From them, they can figure out what your site and business are about, and they’ll rank you high. Now, you only need people to stay on your site when they click on it, and you’re all done.
7. Conversions
Whatever you do, the main goal of your web design should be to optimize your conversion rate. You can’t say that you’re getting results online if you aren’t converting visitors into customers. So, here are a couple of things you should focus on when designing your pages.
- Color scheme. Use colors to make your CTAs more prominent. Make them stand out, but do it with taste. Make them desirable to click on, and people will do it.
- Keep it simple. Don’t clutter your pages with busy backgrounds. Use sleek and modern designs to attract visitors.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are plenty of ways web design impacts customer experience. Be sure to spend some time thinking about it and figure out how to use those to your advantage. Follow our tips, and not only you’ll get more people to your site, but search engines will also love you more. Make your user experience better, and you’ll make more sales. So, it pays off to work on your web design.
Author bio
Richard Vance is a freelance writer and an SEO expert from New York. He helps companies from all over the U.S., and the world, improve their sites and achieve the results they’re after..