When considering a positive user experience, you should immediately think of design. Specifically, well-done UX design can help cultivate the optimal user experience. Whether you hire a UX designer or implement these features yourself, every website should incorporate these concepts into their layout. Their design should be the culmination of several elements working together to create a single user-friendly site. Let’s take a look at what these elements are and how you can incorporate them.
Keep UX Design Simple
Use a simple, uncluttered design for optimal user experience. More isn’t always better, and it can make it hard to read the important content on display. Keeping a simple design lends to a more user-friendly site. Users can easily find what they’re looking for, comprehend your message, and ultimately maintain a good impression of your website.
Cultivate a Responsive Design
“Responsive design” means a website that is intuitive of the device it’s being displayed on. The website detects the device and automatically responds by adjusting to the size of its screen. This makes for a higher quality UX design because your website isn’t limited to only one type of device.
Make It Accessible
Accessibility means setting up an even field of access for all users, regardless of their situation. When thinking about what is accessible, you or your hired UX designer should consider contrast, text size, heading placement, and implement alternative texts in lieu of images or videos. You can also offer alternative navigation methods for your website. Keeping your site accessible for all makes it a more user-friendly site, too.
Create a Visual Hierarchy
A visual hierarchy sounds fancier than it actually is. Ultimately, it simply means arranging your design elements in a way that helps guide your users’ attention. You or your hired UX designer can leverage different font sizes, boldness, and color in a way to draw attention to important headings or titles. This will help your user understand the structure of your website, especially when navigating for the first time.
Include Branding
Include consistent and cohesive branding throughout your UX design that reflects your business’s values and overall identity. Make sure that your branding choices are consistent with your normal marketing materials. This lends to stronger marketing, brand awareness, and public image of your brand. You should use the same typography, colors, and logos throughout your entire website and any supporting visuals. This type of strong branding makes it easier for users to trust your brand and build a relationship with your business. As such, they gain a more positive user experience and are more likely to return.
Use Feedback to Your Advantage
User feedback is an invaluable asset you may leverage to make necessary improvements to your site. Users are the actual individuals exploring your website, so their opinion should be considered when it comes to making a more user-friendly site. Make sure to log any feedback that you receive and analyze it for common themes. Maybe there is confusion about a specific feature you offer. Having feedback on this issue will help you directly address it and remove the negative experience from your site.
Focus on Interactivity
Interactivity means providing your users with the ability to interact with your website. This can be through forms, clicking buttons, playing videos, or posting on a blog post. Integrating these features into the site makes for a better user experience since they can actually engage with your website.
Implement Easy Navigation
Your navigation shouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds to understand. If it’s confusing to your users, they will more than likely exit your site rather than attempt to figure things out. This means a higher bounce rate, dissatisfied users, and ultimately less business. Keep your navigation features obvious, efficient, and accessible.
Choose Cohesive Typography
Typography might seem like a small detail, but when considered throughout the entire website, it actually makes up quite a bit of content. That’s not to say you should only stick to a single font, but you should limit yourself to a couple of the same choices. Consistency is key here, too. You don’t want each website page to have a different font or text size. Make sure they send a cohesive message. Make choices that have high readability and are aesthetically cohesive with the rest of your design.
Choose Colors Wisely
Similar to typography, you need to make sure the colors you choose for your website are consistent throughout. It’s not essential to only have a single color, but they should be colors that match and remain on-brand for your business. When users enter your website, they should immediately associate the colors of the pages with your brand. Using color correctly will help you cultivate a better user experience for your website’s visitors.
Is It Time to Remodel Your Website?
Websites are digital real estate. With that being said, their UX design needs updating just as normal real estate requires updating every so often. If you aren’t sure where to begin, reach out to our 245TECH team for an individualized consultation. We can get you started in the right direction. Give us a call at (865) 465-4040 to get started.
