Your website is one of the most critical communication tools for your business. Make your website customer-friendly with an excellent user experience, and your visitors will give a positive impression of your business, loyalty to your brand and raise conversions.
Spending time to understand your users and their user experience requirements is not time wasted. Customers will feel more comfortable during their journey through your website, and it grows their trust in you.
The internet is an ever-changing environment, and it can make you feel like you’re always following behind with the latest trends. A good user experience has some core principles that haven’t changed much in the last decade.
We’ll run through our 11 simple ways to make your website customer friendly. Once completed, you will set a good foundation for a better user experience.
Your website is one of the most critical communication tools for your business. Make your website customer friendly with an excellent user experience and your visitors will give a positive impression of your business, loyalty to your brand and raise conversions.
Spending time to understand your users and their user experience requirements is not time wasted. Customers will feel more comfortable during their journey through your website, and it grows their trust in you.
The internet is an ever-changing environment, and it can make you feel like you’re always following behind with the latest trends. A good user experience has some core principles that haven’t changed much in the last decade.
We’ll run through our 11 simple ways to make your website customer friendly. Once completed, you will set a good foundation for a better user experience.
Speed up your website.
One of the biggest bugbears visitors have is a slow-loading website page.
There are a host of different devices accessing the internet nowadays. Users accessing content whilst out-n-about on their mobiles need fast-loading information. If they have to wait, they’ll not bother and go straight to doing another search.
Making an effort to speed up your website and lower your bounce rate pays off. Users will spend more time reading and engaging with your content
How do I find out how fast my pages load?
Google has a handy tool called Google Pagespeed Insights which will score your website out of 100. It will let you know where the problems are with your website and what needs improvement.
The main issues that will pop up in the report are:
- Incorrectly sized images
- Unminified CSS/JS scripts
- Reducing the number of external files to load.
Test your website now and see how it performs. You’re looking for a score of 75 and above. 95+ is the sweet spot to aim for, though.
Stick to a familiar layout.
Websites have been around for decades, and you’ll notice that some design principles feature on most websites. Website pages comprise a header, body and footer.
Headers:
The header is the first thing your audience sees and usually contains the functionality so users can navigate around your website.
You’ll tend to see a logo and company name on the top left, so it is instantly recognisable (most users read from left to right). The logo should be clickable and direct the user back to the homepage.
Then following your logo on the right-hand side, you should have your navigational menu. Your menu is perhaps the most integral element of your website. It is a consistent visual guide for users to find content.
“Users shouldn’t be expected to learn how your navigation works'”
Making your menu easy to understand is crucial. Make sure to keep it simple. Make use of well-organised lists and categories.
Headers should be consistent and shouldn’t change in look and feel between your pages. They can be compact and don’t overpower the main content.
Body Content:
This section is where your creativity will begin to shine. It is what your users are here to see. It is essential to break your content up into manageable to-read chunks. Nobody likes to be confronted with a wall of text to read.
Another good way to break up content is by using eye-catching and relevant imagery. It gives the user a break from reading, and pictures can paint a thousand words. Carefully select the images you use, as they can leave a negative impression on the reader. Make sure they reflect the mood of the subject.
Footer:
Following our earlier advice on breaking content into readable sections, you can style these sections with typography.
Using one H1 heading at the beginning and then utilising the other headers, make them bold and prominent. Allow users who scan read content too quickly to get a picture of your overall offering.
Paragraph text should be no smaller than 16px, making it accessible to most people. Break large paragraphs into smaller paragraphs, so they won’t seem too daunting to read.
Embrace whitespace in your designs. Filling up every blank space will make your website feel cluttered. Audiences don’t want to search and rummage through your content, and they’ll leave your website if they struggle to digest your information.
Design content so it is readable.
Following our earlier advice on breaking content into readable sections, you can style these sections with typography.
Using one H1 heading at the beginning and then utilising the other headers, make them bold and prominent. Allow users who scan read content too quickly to get a picture of your overall offering.
Paragraph text should be no smaller than 16px, making it accessible to most people. Break large paragraphs into smaller paragraphs, so they won’t seem too daunting to read.
Embrace whitespace in your designs. Filling up every blank space will make your website feel cluttered. Audiences don’t want to search and rummage through your content, and they’ll leave your website if they struggle to digest your information.
Make sure your navigational menus are easy to understand.
Your website menu is the gateway to all of your content. Users will use it as a map as they journey through your content. If you have a lot of pages to list, it’s worth looking at a mega menu function that will help you display all your content neatly.
Condensing your menu down on mobile devices is a good idea. Having easy-to-press menu buttons will give a good user experience.
Once your visitor understands how to navigate your website, they’ll keep it in mind as they move around each page. Keep looks and functions consistent on your pages so visitors can call on them when needed.
Break content up with well-placed CTA’s.
During your audience’s visit to your website, there are various points where they make consumer decisions. A call to action in the right place will help the visitors take the desired action.
Some customers already know what they want, and it’s just a decision of ‘is the price right?’ and ‘do I get everything I need?’. A call to action higher up the page would be ideal for them. They won’t need to scroll past information they don’t need to see and be able to buy your products or contact you.
Customers may be unsure whether the product/service is the one for them. They will scroll through your page and digest the information. If your product/service is complicated, you can place a CTA mid-way through your content. Offering the reader this option helps build a relationship between yourself and the customer. Most times, verbal communication is much better than hoping the customer understands your product from what they read online.
Every customer will be at a different stage of the sales process. They may not be ready to buy today. It’s crucial to capture their details so you can follow up when is best for them. A way to capture details is to offer something for free. Create a downloadable whitepaper they can take away and read. All you need to do is ask for their email address in return.
CTAs usually take the form of an attention-catching headline and a button. Getting the wording right for CTAs will help them convert.
For example, a button to download a whitepaper with the wording: ‘Download ‘will convert lesser than one worded ‘Download your FREE guide’.
The later wording personalises the action using the word ‘your’, and ‘FREE’ appeals to the user. Who doesn’t like getting something for free?
Another example of a product button wording:
‘Order’ will be less effective than ‘Order Today’ or ‘Order now to get your offer’. Using the wording ‘Today’ creates immediacy and urgency. If you have a time-sensitive offer applied, let the customer know this.
Make it easy for your customers to contact you.
Potential and existing customers will always need ways to contact you. Displaying your contact details on your website will always be a crucial practice. Showing your physical address, telephone number, and email address helps build trust between customers and your business.
Visitors looking for these details are looking for a ‘contact us’ link in your navigation or scrolling down to your footer, where contact information’s most commonly held.
Is your website responsive and mobile-friendly?
Taking the time to make your website responsive and mobile-friendly is a top priority. Audiences are now viewing content on a range of devices and screen sizes. Make sure your website looks and functions correctly for all devices.
The best way to tackle this is to take a responsive design approach. Responsive design involves your website’s styling and code, recognising the space available and optimally displaying content.
Many website themes are responsive by default nowadays, and you can use their theme editors to style content for various screen sizes.
Use the correct colours.
Designers use colours to invoke feeling, emotion and reaction. The same goes for using the correct colours in the design for your website.
Different colours cause people to feel and respond in different ways. Never choose your colours based on them being your favourite. Choose colours that fit your brand and give the best impressions.
Blues: have always been a safe choice and invoke feelings of trust, creativity, calmness and professionalism.
Reds: invoke feelings of excitement and boldness. Reds can appeal to a youthful market.
Greens and Yellow: invoke the feeling of optimism, warmth, clarity, cheerfulness and confidence.
When we look at big-name brands and their brand colours, do they match up with this information?
For example:
Dell, HP and Facebook use blues to emphasise dependability, trust and creativity.
Nintendo, Coca-Cola and Lego use reds to emphasise excitement and youthfulness.
Nikon, Amazon and Mcdonald’s use yellows and greens to show optimism, warmth and confidence.
Spend time choosing colours carefully, and ensure they reflect the feelings you hope to invoke. Colours are a non-verbal way to show what your business is all about.
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it, and what you do.”
– Simon Sinek
Have a live chat function available
Going back to our previous point of “verbal communication is much better”, a live chat function is a great way to facilitate this. Customers don’t want to spend time searching for information and would choose to ask a question and receive a direct response.
Getting a conversation started with your customers will help build trust, and you’ll be able to get across your knowledge and passion for your products/services.
Use the right images.
Many companies struggle to create their imagery and follow the path of using stock photography. One of the problems with stock photography is that a lot of other websites use it. Users recognise this, and it decays the transparency and trust of your brand.
Designers use stock photography for its professional-looking quality. Getting a professional look to your imagery can feel like too much of a task. You’ll be surprised at what you can achieve with a mobile phone camera. With a little bit of planning and always having your phone camera handy, you’ll be able to get suitable images to use on your website.
Your audience will appreciate the genuineness of images taken by yourself and that they truly reflect your business.
It’s definitely worth giving it a try and swapping them out for your generic stock photography.
Summary – “consistency is key”.
Once you’ve outlined how to make your website customer-friendly and how it should look and what it needs to say, keep all content based on this. Setting an overall theme for your website will not only make it easier to create content, but it’ll also not confuse the viewer.
Website pages having a different look and feel from each other will cause the viewer to wonder if they are on the same website. Each page they visit will make them lose trust and leads to them leaving your website.
Focus on keeping fonts, headers and layout looking consistent. Images should all look like part of a set. You can mixin graphical elements and make sure they fit your brand colouring.
A great user experience is providing fast-loading content that is accessible and readable on multiple devices. It’s content that guides the user and answers the questions they have.
