For businesses of all types and sizes, the user experience that their websites provide heavily dictates the success of their lead generation and overall business performance. SEO, when done right, helps their websites rank higher on search results — but ultimately, it is the quality of the user experience that will lead to closed sales.
Like many other businesses, you likely rely on your website to generate leads, increase brand awareness, gather customer feedback, and close sales. While SEO is an important factor in helping you achieve these objectives, your website has to deliver a high level of user experience to actually turn visitors into paying customers.
So, what are the factors or website elements that heavily affect the user experience? From a customer point of view, here are some of the most important ones:
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Website loading time
In the digital age, no one wants to wait more than a few seconds for a website to load. If a website is too slow, many customers tend to opt out and look for another option that will help them find what they’re looking for faster. Hence, the speed at which your website loads is an extremely important factor in your user experience, often determining how many visitors actually stay on your website to see what your business is all about.
If your website is loading too slow, then you may need professional core web vitals optimization services to figure out how you can fix it. Leave the problem unaddressed, and you may just be missing out on dozens — if not hundreds — of potential customers every month.
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The complexity of website design
When customers visit your website, they want to be able to find what they’re looking for without much hassle. So, if you have too many drop-down lists, unnecessary sidebars, or simply too many elements on the user interface, they may have a hard time accomplishing the goal that they had when they clicked on your link.
A key principle in website design is to make your user interface as simple and easy to use as possible. This often involves limiting your menu, simplifying your highlighted content, and eliminating unnecessary elements that only serve to complicate your design. You don’t want to bombard your visitors with information as soon as they see your landing page. Instead, you would want them to be able to find what they are looking for easily and within seconds.
3. Ease of transactions
Similar to the website design, keeping your processes simple is a crucial factor in the user experience that your website provides. Customers want to be able to transact with a business quickly and easily, and many won’t stand for anything too complex or difficult to understand.
Make it as convenient as possible for your customers to order, return, and exchange products. Keep your order form simple and refrain from asking unnecessary questions. Furthermore, ensure that the returns & exchange policies are easy to find on your website; don’t hide it as many businesses are tempted to do so to discourage returns or exchanges. Customers, especially first-time buyers, feel more secure with their purchases when they know they can return them easily, which can, in turn, help increase sales.
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Mobile-friendliness
Over 90% of the global Internet population uses mobile to go online. With that in mind, it is more important now more than ever to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly. Otherwise, you may experience a higher bounce rate (percentage of users that leave before viewing other pages of the website) when customers see that your website is optimized for desktop.
Furthermore, the majority of that 90% uses mobile to make online purchases. So aside from helping increase the number of visitors that stay on your website after seeing the landing page, mobile optimization can also help your business close more deals.
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Availability and quality of customer service
Your website may not have all the answers to your visitors’ questions, meaning you have to keep an open line of communication between the business and its potential customers. That said, make it easy for customers to contact customer service; always stay on top of communication, and provide multiple avenues with which customers can contact your business.
Optimizing your website’s user experience affects the business as a whole. For one, ensuring that customers have a positive experience with your website helps increase sales and is a great way to leave a good first impression on them. Moreover, it helps your website rank higher on Google as the algorithm focuses more on the user experience that your website provides.
