Otherwise known as UX, user experience is a key component of a website and dictates how users interact both with your business in the digital landscape.
Whether your company happens to be new and localised to a specific town or village, or an institution that is one of the largest in the country, it is key that users and customers are able to easily navigate your website in order to create positive interactions and conversions.
So, what do businesses have to consider when thinking about user experience?
Why is page load speed important?
As the speed in which people are able to access websites increases, user patience is beginning to shorten.
If a page takes more than just four seconds to load, you can expect at least 25% of your users to click off, sometimes forever.
Ensure that your images are optimised, that they are of the right file type, and that your code is as streamlined as possible. Every extraneous piece of code will slow down your website.
Check your page speed loading times using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
What is responsive website design?
Now more than ever people are using mobile phones and tablets to access websites, which means that a site must be able to respond to the dimensions of the screen for which it appears.
A responsive site will automatically adjust itself in order to meet the criteria specified by the device requesting it.
It’s also important to note that when Google crawls a website, it is becoming more likely that the search engine will prioritise the mobile version first.
This means that if the mobile version of your website is not up to Google’s standards, it might not gain as much exposure in the search result pages (SERPs).
Information architecture
With so many options available, it’s important that websites are able to provide information in a simple and navigable way to ensure that users remain on a website.
Information architecture is about organising content so that users can easily understand what is happening on a page and so that they can reach their desired goal in the fastest way possible.