Is Your Website Design a Problem?

We all want user retention. Here are some practical and actionable best practices to improve your site and make your users happy!

There are tons of articles online with best practice tips for website. I have found that most of those articles miss a key consideration: The user’s perspective. People are not statistics and they are not robots. To keep human users on our sites, we humans need to consider their experience.

60% of Your Website Visitors are Using Mobile Devices.

This is more than just a statistic. This is a call to action.

There was a time when it was standard practice to create unique pages for every subject area on your site. It was thought that signposting with unique pages helped users to navigate the site. Users at that time were almost 100% on desktop computers. Clicking around a site using a mouse is not much of an effort. For mobile users, however, navigating to different pages is an effort. Having tons of detailed content on a small device is overwhelming for users.

Since the majority of your users are on a mobile device, it may be time to take a look at ways you can improve your site. I ask you to consider this simple guiding principle:

Serve your users. 

This means more than having a responsive site. Every site should be responsive. Resizing for various screen sizes is not enough. Your goal should be improving your site design to make your visitor experience enjoyable and efficient. Don’t waste their time. Don’t have hidden content. Don’t make things hard to click.

It is easy: Give your users the relevant content that they want in an easy-to-find way. Bonus points for making it attractive.

Top 10 Ways You Can Improve Your Site Experience:

1. Less navigation is key. Navigating to new pages on Mobile devices is cumbersome. Reduce the number of pages that your visitor needs to move through. Group like content into logical pages. Avoid drop down menus if you can. If you have more than 5 main navigation areas, you should be rethinking this.

2. Reduce content. Make sure that every bit of text on your site is optimized to be impactful and quick to read. Please do this. A long wall of text is one of the first things that will cause your users to bounce. You are not informing them if they leave.

3. Your homepage should tell the whole story. Think of it as a mini-site. It is very likely that you user will not make it past your home page. With this in mind, make their visit count with a home page that covers ALL of the key information you want your visitors to see.

4. Ditch the Slider. User stats show that only 1% of users ever click on carousel content, and in that case they only clicked the first slide. Make your site header show your most important content 100% of the time.

5. Improve your load speed. Your site visitors will bounce if it takes too much time to load. If your load time is over two seconds you have lost your viewer. Click here to test your Page Speed

6. SEO is not everything. There was a time when SEO was the hottest three letters in the web world. People who did not even know what SEO stands for were sure that they needed it. Don’t get me wrong, SEO does have an important place, but hoping SEO will drive lots of new traffic to you site is just wishful thinking. SEO’s real strength is in helping visitors find your site more easily. If you look at traffic stats, a large percent of search engine referrals are for users typing in your actual business name. These are not new customers, these were already your customers. Your marketing programs and your direct connection with your customers through socials, sales, and other interactions, is what really increases traffic to your site.

7. Do not waste your footer real estate. Consider the user experience: Your user has just scrolled the entire home page, now they are interested in contacting you or opting in. Great! Make it easy for them to engage or continue reading. Utilize your footer by adding key page links, a contact form, an opt-in or a download. Anything that is relevant to further engagement can be housed in a footer for added convenience to your user and a boost on engagement for you.

8. Mega-menus are a thing for a reason. Mega-menus are trending and I like them in specific cases. Above, I mentioned that less is more with nav. The exception is businesses who have a large product catalog, a wide scope of service areas or lots of articles and content. With a mega-menu you can create categories within your drop-down menu and add featured images and graphics. This creates visual interest in key areas that help your content-heavy menu to be easier for users to read.

9. Optimize. With the majority of visitors accessing your site on smaller screens, you may want to rethink how content is presented to ensure it reads well. Consider implementing collapsible menus and simplified navigation trees that work well on a small, touch screen devices.

10. Accessibility is the Law. Prioritizing accessibility is not just a good thing to help others, it is a requirement. For US Businesses with 15 or more full-time employees, accessibility is a legal mandate. ADA compliance includes incorporating features like alt text for images, color contrast for readability, keyboard navigation support and proper semantic HTML markup. The need for ADA compliance is one of the key factors in many companies embarking on a full site redesign. Click here to review the ADA Guidelines.

Considering your user experience isn't just a good idea, it is a guiding principle that applies not only to your website, but all of your marketing efforts. Even if you cannot do a full site redesign, employing some of the recommendations above can help elevate your site experience and improve retention rates.

Focusing on user-centric design principles will help your site not only attract visitors, but also keep users engaged and happy. Thinking of your audience and making their experience positive fosters loyalty and drives success for your brand.