The design of your website makes a big difference in how well it will work as a marketing communications tool. You can’t just make a homepage, add a couple of splash pages, and expect people to find your website. You need it to be well-designed and relevant for your purposes while keeping people on respective pages to learn more about relevant topics.
User experience is critically important for website development and one of the primary considerations for the algorithms that search engines like Google and Bing use to assess websites and web pages for ranking purposes on search results. The term user experience generally refers to the way in which a web page presents specific information and maintains visitors’ interests. Generally, websites and web pages that provide visitors with information that is easy to read and scan help to create a quality user experience. So do a variety of complementary types of information, such as photos, images, and videos.
User Experience Design Elements
Among website designers and developers, user experience is referred to as “UX.” The term UX is an example of enhancing the user experience by making it easy to scan and know its meaning without occupying as much space as the term “user experience” requires. Let’s take a closer look at how a web design Phoenix-based businesses and other entities use could enhance the user experience for visitors.
There generally are two elements to UX design. Those are the user experience and the user interface. One refers to how the visitors use a web page while the other refers to how that web page enables a better user experience. Let’s break them down more into the UX and user interface components.
Four Elements of User Experience
Website developers can help you to enable your website to give visitors an outstanding user experience with a high-quality UX design. Part of that user experience is loading the web page quickly and ensuring all links and other page elements work as intended. It takes more than technical capability for the page and website to deliver a high-quality user experience that search engines will rate highly and reward accordingly. Here’s a look at four of the most important elements.
Storytelling Capability
Whether you are describing a product, a service, or explaining an issue, the ability to tell it in an engaging manner is essential for a good user experience. A good website design company like Avenue 25 with quality storytelling to help keep visitors interested in the page content. You don’t need to publish long stories, but you need to get to the point and explain what makes something important and how it might affect respective visitors.
Visitor Engagement
A website can use several design elements to help keep visitors engaged on web pages. It starts with how textual information is laid out so that visitors can scan it quickly and access the information that they seek. The colors, wording, and tone likewise help to engage visitors. So do photos, images, and videos that are relevant to the page topic and encourage visitors to stay on the page. You also can add extras, like fun quizzes, sound effects, and other nuances that add to the user experience while keeping visitors engaged.
Informational Objectives
The information that you provide on particular web pages must be relevant to the search terms that people use to find links to your website. Search engine algorithms assess the information presented versus specific search terms and factor the information into the search rankings. The longer people stay on your web page indicates the information is relevant to a particular search term. You should include calls to action when you are trying to sell a product or a service.
Visitor Usability
It’s important for online visitors to be able to use your website and respective web pages. Slow loading times and defective links will frustrate visitors and cause them to leave sooner and likely never return. Search engine algorithms will reward web pages and websites when they are usable and punish them when they have defects and bad content that causes visitors to leave quickly.
Four Elements of User Interface
The user interface refers to how a web page interacts with its visitors. The interface should be lively and fun while providing visitors with the information that they seek and maybe a little extra. Let’s take a closer look at how the user interface works.
Web Page Layout
Page layout makes a big difference in how your web page supports the user interface. You should have easily digestible textual information and working links to videos, complementary information, and other pages. One of those pages might include a checkout so that you can turn the visit into a sales conversion.
Appealing Visual Design
You’ll need an appealing visual design that helps to make it easy to stay on the page and generally enjoy obtaining the information that a visitor seeks. A good contrast between the background and textual information will make it easier to read. An appealing visual design also makes it easier to scan the page and locate links, data, and images that help to make the web page visually appealing.
Product or Service Branding
Your website and respective web pages are a great opportunity to influence the public perception of any goods or services that you might provide. The branding element helps to establish your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness for visitors. It also helps to earn high ratings by search engine algorithms.
Interactive Content
Interactive content helps to keep visitors engaged, but they must work correctly. You don’t want broken links, bad images, or other defects to interfere with the user interface. Instead, fun links that work and enable visitors to interact with the web page are ideal.
Understanding the basic elements of the user experience can help you determine your website’s strengths and weaknesses and how to improve it.