User experience plays a key role when it comes to customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Great browsing experience contributes the most in reducing the cart abandonment rate and increasing conversions. So, if you want to increase the number of clients or customers and generate high revenue, make sure you focus on improving the usability, efficiency and accessibility so as to offer amazing user experience to your visitors.
If you are planning to build a website for your business, make sure you hire the company that offers the best creative web design services and make sure you ask the designers to create great user experience for your customers. Here are some of the best user experience design tips that you can share with the designers that you hire…
1 Flow:
Flow is one of the most important things that affect the user experience. A user can easily get annoyed if there is no proper flow. So, make sure you make users walk through your website in proper flow. Keep in mind that users tend to notice things first that are on the top of the web page and then keep coming down. Use common, consistent and easy to use interfaces and patterns; don’t make users learn something new. Try to avoid dead end pages on the website, as it creates and extra work for users.
2 Scrolling:
Users will keep scrolling as long as they feel that they are going to come across relevant information. Also, make sure your website creates strong visualization as users scroll and users get more and more content.
3 Color:
When it comes to colors, the first and the foremost tip is to convert the design of your website into the grayscale, so as to optimize it for the color blinds, so that no one misses important information. Make sure you don’t use blue for any text other than links. Use proper colors for mobile website. Make sure you allocate one color for cal to actions and then don’t use that color for anything else on the website.
4 Loading:
The primary goal of a website is to get loaded quickly once a user opens it. Website speed depends upon the load time and behavior, animations and waiting time. Make sure that the text gets displayed before the images, so that users can start reading the text till the time images gets loaded.
5 Mobile:
Make sure that the elements of the mobile website are huge and far from each other so that no user faces problems in tapping them. When it comes to mobile website, the minimum size requirement is 1×1 (cm) with padding. Don’t user vertical scrolling for anything other than scrolling. Also, make sure users can interact with everything with single touch on mobile; nothing should require double tap.
6 Navigation:
Users should be able to access the main navigation menu easily. You must not make hierarchy of more than 4 levels. Navigation should be consistent and labels should be not more than 2 to 3 words, with the first word the most important and informative. Use breadcrumbs so that users don’t get lost into the website. Keep vertical dropdown menus; as it is difficult to scroll horizontally. The main elements like login button or search bar should be prominent at the obvious pages; don’t hide them under the main menus.
7 Forms:
One good practice is to align the form fields in single vertical line, so as to ensure quick scanning. Also, the field labels should be outside the text field, not inside the field, so that users don’t lose the track of the fields. If your form is too long, make sure you use separators to split up the form into sections in order to make it user friendly. The form errors should be kept next to the respective form field, so that users don’t have to waste time in finding what is wrong. Also, the error messages should be useful and easy to understand.
8 Links:
Make sure that the links on your website stand out. You must use blue color and underline, which shows hyperlink. Also, it must not be a surprise when user lands up on the page after clicking on that link. The link itself should say where it is going to land user. Make sure you use a different color for visited links.
9 Buttons:
Look and feel is extremely important when it comes to buttons; they should look clickable. Size is also one of the most important factors to be taken into the consideration, as users should get enough space on the button to click or tap. Color, border and label also play an important role in buttons. Also, make sure all the buttons work and do the expected action when clicked upon. Focus extra on buttons that delete data on mobiles so as to avoid the accidental tap.
10 Search:
Search field is inevitable in any and every type of website. Of course, it should look like a text box and should be placed at the top right corner, as users expect it to be like that. Also, make sure it is wide enough to search for the query on the entire website.
11 Carousels:
You must use descriptive labels instead of carousel arrows so that users know what is coming up next. Also, hardly any user clicks on carousels, so you must not depend on them for clicks. Moreover, although they slide automatically, they should be switched to manual once a user clicks on them.
12 Accordions:
They are labels and thumbnails listed vertically which can be expanded when clicked. They are used when you have got a lot of content to publish on a particular web page. Make sure you give an option to collapse the content that a user has expanded to read it.
13 Icons:
Icons should be designed in such a way that it should reflect its function and purpose. Make sure that the icons are simple, easy to understand, familiar and meaningful. Of course, icons are useful, but don’t over use them, just for decorating purpose. Use them only when they are needed.
14 Content:
Content plays a key role when it comes to user experience. Make sure that the content is unique, informative and engaging. Always remember that the most important content should be the most prominent visually. Users start using from left so they read at-least first two-three words while scanning. So, make sure put key information first. Also, place the high priority content at the top of the web page and use proper font and color of the text, as per the importance of the content. The contact information like phone number, address and email address are expected to be at the top right corner, so location of the content is extremely important. Don’t make over use of jargons and trendy words. In fact, simple and easy to understand content is great for websites.
15 Readability:
Readability is not just about being able to read something, but also about wanting to read something. In order to increase readability, you must increase the line spacing between numbered and bulleted lists, lines and paragraphs. Also, make sure you use right font style. Avoid using small and condensed fonts.
Now that you are aware of some of the best user experience design tips, it is advisable for you to share these with the web designers you hire for your website, so as to develop the best business website that helps you generate high revenue and maximize the profit.