Improving the Website Experience

Web design is always going to be exciting. Almost every day there’s something new arriving on the scenes, and consumer habits are always changing.

Sometimes, as web designers, it can be a struggle to keep up with the latest trends. But life is full of surprises, and these little challenges are what keep us on our toes.

Today, web design is all about the experience. How does the website make the customer feel? Are they walking away with a good experience, or, have they had a bad one? We’d like to hope everyone has had a good experience. But this isn’t always the case. Why?

As web designers, we often forget about the end users. It sounds silly, but it’s true. We can become so heavily invested in our own assumptions or the business goals that we forget to validate our designs. Forgetting who we are building the experience for.

Here are a few tips and tricks we can use to help enhance the website experience.

Stop, and smell the roses

Have you ever taken a moment to observe and see what your customers are doing on your site?

This might be new to some of us, but it’s a vital opportunity to see where the customer friction points are. What are the customers not understanding? This first-hand feedback gives us insights to make small incremental changes that could have a huge impact on the experience and the business.

Sometimes we craft a journey, that might make sense to us, a web designer, but in reality can be really complicated for the user.

Taking a basic prototype into a focus group or a one on one meeting can help us to develop something the customer wants and understands because we’re getting feedback quickly.

The power of content

Content is one of the most powerful tools a web designer can have in their toolkit. Content has the power to set the tone, convey a message, give direction and sell your brand.

As a content writer, we often hear the phrase ‘customers don’t read’. While these words might be true, presenting a customer journey with no content or the wrong content can have a negative impact.

People do read on the Internet, despite popular dogma. Imagine a digital product with zero words — we’d all be asking, “What does this button do?” and “How the heck do I find what I’m looking for?”

Before both, web designer and content writer put pen to paper they need to understand the context and the journey they want to take the customer on. In my eyes, both content and web designer should be joined at the hip. They need to craft an experience that resonates with the customer. Good web content guides and supports the experience.

Time is of the essence

The customer perception of time is always changing. What we thought was fast 5 years ago is actually slow compared by today’s standards.

The customer’s decision time can now be affected in milliseconds. And it only takes one-tenth of a second for a customer to change their mind. Astonishing, right?

Customers, like you and me, will start getting annoyed with a website in just one second. By three seconds, if we see an opportunity to exit, we’ll take it. I bet you can name a few scenarios where you have experienced something similar. How did that make you feel?

Let’s not waste our customers’ time by looking at a page that has irrelevant content and images. Your customer has a goal. And the best thing that we can do is help get them there.

Understand your site goals

The average website has up to 8–12 core goals. Find out what they are and study them. If something isn’t working as well as you’d hoped, go and improve them. Because it’s most likely having a negative impact on your overall experience. And pissing off your customers.

There you have it. A few handy suggestions on how you can improve your website experience. By looking at your site through your customer’s eyes, you’ll find loads to work on and improve, which can help drive business success.

Always ask yourself, has the customer been able to complete the tasks they wanted to do. If not, why?

A bad experience can ripple through an organisation, breaking a companies reputation and damaging their brand image.

Your website is not a murder mystery. Don’t make your customers think they’re trying to decipher one.