The characteristics of user-friendly web designs are that they are simple and loved. Modern consumers are choosy as well as “judgy.” For online marketers, this means that failure to provide pleasant cyberspace experience is to lose the online game. After all, your website is an invitation for audiences to check out your business idea, and no one has got the time to play hide and seek with the information on your website.

Websites that fail to respond to visitor’s need for instant information gratification are deemed worthless and annoying. If you want to grow and maintain good website traffic, designing a user-friendly website is key.

Examples of Web Designs Users Find Appalling

Websites with low bounce rates are those that commit design mistakes users find appalling. Such mistakes include:

• No clear call-to-action
• Unnavigable site
• Slow-loading web pages
• Unreadable font
• Illogical flow of information
• Multiple pop-ups that interrupt the browsing process
• Too many ads
• Error 404!

What Statistics tell us

Modern consumers know that technology has been involving and it should be used to make their lives easier. The easiest way to assess the impact of user experience on website performance is to look at the statistics on visitor’s behavior on various websites and their feelings towards the associated brands.

88 % of Americans don’t like brands with poorly performing websites

A 2o13 SOASTA survey of 2044 adult Americans on the impact of online user-experience on brands’ performance shows that bad experiences on a website harm the associated brand.

Nine out of ten Americans harbor negative feelings towards the brand that frustrated them online. Additionally, 83% had a negative reaction towards brands with low network speed. The negative feelings varied from Annoyance (75%), Anger (13%), Frustration (69%), Disrespect (12%), and Distrust (19%).

These statistics, therefore, means that the only way to create and maintain massive website traffic is to make your website presentable, engaging, and working as expected. The modern consumer wants you to use technology to make their lives easier, don’t try to frustrate them online.

Web design influences conversions

Dynamic landing pages are pages that adjust the message displayed based on the user’s browsing history, interests, browsing platform, and more. It adds a touch of personalization, making cyberspace more relevant to a visitor’s specific needs.

A survey by Periscope indicates that dynamic landing pages increase traffic more than basic one-size-fits-all designs. The numbers from a short experiment that provided dynamic landing pages showed that desktop conversion rates upped by 9.2% while mobile conversion rates increased by a whopping 25.2%. The meaning? Anytime user-preferences get factored into website design, brand trust and loyalty get built.

Poorly designed websites lose to the competitors

SOASTA 2013 survey statistics indicate that a whopping 28% of visitors are not willing to wait for slow-loading pages. They’d sooner jump to the competition. Another 28% would not trust such a website, and 18% would not check out such a website again. What a loss!

Brands are losing competitiveness on the online landscape merely because they fail to recognize the experiences users want. Website speed is an important thing to have in mind when designing a website. Pages that take more than 3 minutes to load are deemed annoying already.

Visual Design matters

It only takes about 0.05s for visitors to form an opinion about your website then decide whether to proceed or hit the back button. The online cyberspace is not a place rid of snap judgments; everyone is on the move with split-of-a-second decisions, first impressions matter.

Studies show that visual appeal can be gauged within 0.05s. The visual appeal is gauged from colors, spacing, fonts, symmetry, structure, and more. Research by Google shows that highly appealing websites have low visual complexity and follow conventions that make them simple and familiar.

Tips for Designing a Website with the User-experience in Mind

When designing a website, you should always remember that the best experiences are simple. Moreover, as surveys show, web designs that stick to conventions are deemed appealing. The recommended tips for providing the ultimate desired user-experience therefore include:

Make the site responsive to multiple platforms

We live in a multi-screen world; personally, I check my Facebook both on mobile and desktop platforms daily, and so are 90 % of online audiences. Webpages that cannot get customized for both mobile and desktop platforms are frustrating and violate the high affinity our eyes and mind have for proportions. They’re unnavigable and unreadable.

With 51.2 % of online traffic coming from mobile devices and 49 % from desktop devise, you should be wise not to lose on such numbers.

Build a responsive website suitable for all devices with an option to switch between mobile, desktop, or tablet platforms easily.

Fix the reasons behind error 404

Bad error 404! I usually find this frustrating and waste of my data. Fix issues to do with broken links, bad redirects, and more that result in this error message. Don’t redirect the removed pages to the homepage; it confuses the visitor more.

If you’ve not yet fixed the error, you can use a custom 404 page that provides visitors with assistance and useful links.

Avoid unwanted pop-ups and safeguard user data.

Limit the interruptions, especially the unwanted pop-ups and redirects that leave the user confused where he started. Online ads are inevitable, but a sea of pop-up windows that won’t go away interferes with the traditional browsing experience. Such interruptive malware, software, and ads waste the user’s data, leads to canceled requests and higher bounce rates.

Malware poses a risk to visitor information. Guarantee user privacy by making available privacy settings and SSL scripts that safeguard user data.

Use easy-to-digest content

Grammar and formatting do matter. If you use hard to understand vocabulary, then the user is going to spend much of the brain resources trying to comprehend the message and fail to enjoy your website presentation. The same goes for formatting; contents that are not presentable discourage visits.

Make use of simple vocabularies, smaller paragraphs, bullets, headers, and other formatting techniques to make your content easy to digest.

Also, declutter content using white pages so as not overwhelm visitors with a sea of continuous information.

Maintain a logical flow of information

A logical flow of information matters; no one wants useless content with leads buried in the last paragraph. Everyone in the online audience is after some instant gratification, and you can make sure to that by making your content visually appealing, readable, and organized. Especially if you are going to guide visitors from the click, conversion to the buying stage, relevant information is critical. Ensure effective navigation by providing search boxes, working hyperlinks, breadcrumbs (trail of links for navigating up and down the XML tee).

Provide dynamic landing pages

Add a touch of personalization that makes cyberspace relevant to the user at a particular time by adjusting the display based on browser, browsing platform, age, and more.

In retrospect, successful web design companies like Web Design of York are user-oriented and work whenever customers need them. In the spirit of making a difference in peoples’ lives, a business should make use of modern technology to provide the best but simple experiences on their websites. Do you want to know how your website is performing online? Contact us for a free consultation!