1 – Define your call to action

When it comes to a good user experience you need to establish the main goal of your website or target for your specific web page. We generally stick to 3 main call to action points on your homepage. As an example are you driving leads, increasing conversions or encouraging downloads? Once you have defined the end goal then creating your call to action will be a walk in the park.

If you want your users to fill in a form, make sure it’s visible, neatly formatted and easily accessible from all devices. Also, make sure it’s in prime position on your page with a clear instruction as to why people should fill in the form and what they get back in return when they do. I.e. a white paper, brochure download, call back, etc.

Additionally, if you want people to call your company then your phone number has to stand out and also be clickable from mobile devices and readable for Google (or other search engines) to pick up – this will mean users can find your contact number without even accessing your website.

Quick tip: Label all of your call to action with clear concise language so the user understands what they need to do when arrive on any page of your site and make the end goal as clear as possible.

2 – Define your target audience

This will take a little bit of market research, but it’s a necessity if you want your website to be successful. Particularly when it comes to performing conversion rate optimisation (CRO). You need to understand what your users and future customers are going to be looking for. User experience plays a big part in SEO and will influence bounce rate, time on-site, and user return rate. If a user or client can find what they are looking for on your site this will determine a good user experience so understanding what it is your offering them in the first place is vital in improving conversion.

Quick tip: Analyse what it is people are actually using your site for and refine your product or service offering to target that.

3 – Clearly label page navigation

Whatever you do do not make the navigation on your website confusing. When a user is looking for something specific the layout and structure of the site must be clear and self explanatory. They might be unsure of the exact name of your product or service so you have to give them clear direction. 

Quick tip: Label pages extremely clearly and write a brief outline of what the user will find within those pages. 

4 – Less is more

It might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many online companies get this completely wrong. Less doesn’t generally refer to how much text or images there are but more how the page elements will attract the user to the website. This might include the colour, moving objects, such as animations or even photos. All you need to do is keep the focus of guiding the user through their journey without over complicating it.

Though animations and flashy page assets look good – they can distract from the main goal if not executed correctly.

Quick tip: If you’re unsure of the quality of animations on your site, remove them. Stay as open as possible for visitors coming to your site from any browsers. 

5 – Language

Remember, your target audience always has to be able to understand you. One of the biggest factors in converting visitors is making sure the content and links are grammatically correct. Using good language promotes credibility and trust in a website and business so it’s very important to get this right.

Quick tip: Read through your own content and strip out any buzz words or jargon so your users can understand your services or product clearly.

6 – Links

Having dead links on the user interface is frustrating for anyone. It will certainly increase the bounce rate as users will just look elsewhere for what they need. A website which doesn’t perform well will be punished by search engines and poor maintenance will be exposed.

Quick tip: Go through the site and check every link to make sure it’s going to the right page. Additionally, add hyperlinks around your website in body text and make these words clearly labelled to be clicked.

7 – Loading time

Another factor which can prove costly for user experience is the loading time of a website. This is something else which will increase the bounce rate. The easiest way to test the loading time is to clear browsing data and test with different devices, browsers and internet connections. This way you’ll get a true sense of how quickly the website is loading.

Quick tip: Check what makes your page loads slow and focus on removing those hefty, weighty elements. Once they’re cleared your site should run smoothly. It may mean a slight development update, but every second counts in keeping a users attention.

8 – Contact

What do you want users to do when they come to your site? Do you want them to make a purchase or get in touch with you? Making sure you have all the relevant contact information and web forms will help to increase your conversion rates. Any important contact information should really be displayed above the fold.

Quick tip: Add phone numbers and forms at the bottom of all of your services, products or contact pages so that the visitors can quickly get in touch when they’ve read through your content. 

Obviously, there are a number of other ways to really advance your website conversion, and we write about all of these in further advanced UX blogs, however for the basic web admin these are great ways to improve the success of your web page conversions.