By teknet on Thursday 28th June 2018, 9:44am
In our previous post on keeping traffic on a website, we mentioned a few things which were important to the user experience – things like ensuring menus are easy to navigate. However, there are a couple of other things to consider to improve user experience on a website – which in turn can improve placement on Google Ads (if you want to advertise).
We’ve come up with a few ways you can improve your website’s user experience, to add to those we put on previous posts.
Is some of the text on your website too long? Things like product descriptions are fine as people need details, but if your homepage is full of blocks of really long text, maybe consider shortening it. There’s more chance that people will read shorter, bite-sized pieces of text than long paragraphs. It’s also best to make sure your text is relevant and the tone is right for your business so it appeals to visitors.
This is something else worth checking. Things such as images and videos need to be relevant to what you want to say, or to your business overall. Having content online is good – but having irrelevant content definitely isn’t!
You don’t need to get rid of everything, as images and other content are great for a website. And some things might be relevant even if they’re not specifically about your products. For example, if you run a beauty business, then pictures of the plants and flowers used in your products is relevant – but a video detailing the various varieties of a particular plant when you only sell one might not be. It’s really up to you – or possibly ask someone else’s opinion as they’re not so involved with your site and so might see it more objectively.
We kind of covered this a little in the WordPress Plugins article when we mentioned using a reviews plugin. Reviews are a great example – as they can influence people’s decisions when it comes to buying based on what other customers say about the product. Another extra thing might be information on related products – so the beauty business mentioned earlier might advertise a corresponding conditioner on a shampoo page. Make sure it doesn’t detract from the page itself, and people might be more likely to look at the product advertised as well.
A long winded checkout process might lead to an abandoned cart. Or a mailing list form which requires 20 pieces of information might limit how many people sign up. You need to include everything important, but make sure customers don’t need to go through unnecessary web pages to complete an action like buying a product. Allowing them to create accounts and save their details would be a great way to do this if you aren’t already too – as then they don’t need to enter every detail each time they purchase.
Another important way to look at this is if you want people to register for a course or book something online. Any sign-up process needs to be easy for customers, and not take too long to complete. It’s also important to consider this from your point of view – how are you keeping track of who’s registered? Which leads nicely into the next point.
Can your website be a little easier for you to manage? Maybe that course registration could be less time-consuming – for example, being able to see how many people have signed up easily and their contact details without having to move them into a spreadsheet each time someone registers. Maybe there’s something else – like stock management – that takes up all your time when it could be a lot simpler. Software can help reduce the time you have to spend managing things like this, which can help user experience.
How? You may ask. Well, if you’re not spending time looking at stock or trying to find something, then you could work on another important part of your business – like introducing new items, or planning a marketing campaign for your next sale. Which helps your customers – and sales – in the long term.
There are a few other things you can do to improve user experience – such as giving your website a little refresh every couple of years to keep things new. Updating it ensures that your website is suitable for your business even if you’re now selling more products – and this suitability will improve user experience.
Appealing to customers by improving user experience is a key part of running a website – if they have a good experience, they could be more likely to revisit. If not, they might never come back.
Or reduce how long time-consuming tasks take? Teknet Software can design and build software to suit your business. Check out our Services page for more information! Alternatively, fill out the form on our Contact page, email hello@teknet.io or phone 0800 488 0400 for details.
