How can you improve your website’s user experience?

Did you know that 7 out of 10 users leave a website after a bad experience? A good user experience, on the other hand, enables a company to improve lead retention and conversion, build customer loyalty and promote its brand image, thus boosting its business performance. Here are our five tips to improve your website’s user experience. As a reminder, user experience (User eXperience - UX) is defined as the feeling users experience when using a website, product or service.  

Improve the loading speed of your website 

Often neglected, a website’s loading speed is one of the key tools for guaranteeing a good customer experience. It is estimated that 40% of Internet users will abandon a site if the loading time exceeds three seconds.  However, loading speed is also a key criterion to obtain a good Google ranking. A site whose loading time is greater than three or four seconds risks being poorly referenced, and will suffer a higher abandonment rate. To speed up the navigation, you could use a more efficient host, lighten images, remove unnecessary plugins or optimise the code. If you want to know how fast your website loads, and identify the causes of a possible slow loading, Google PageSpeed Insights can be very useful. A site is considered fast enough if the loading time is between 500 milliseconds and three seconds. In order for the web interface to perform well, it must also be free of bugs and error pages that significantly impact the user experience (as well as SEO). To do this, you can use a crawler, such as Oncrawl.com, which will identify 404 errors, orphan pages, duplicates, etc.  

Rethinking UX Design

UX Design is website design process that focuses on the user experience, with the aim of improving the customer experience. If you experience a drop in traffic or the conversion rate, rethinking the design of your website can be invaluable. To do this, first make sure that your website’s design (graphic charter, typography, visuals, etc.), reflects the values and identity of your brand, and that it is aligned with the expectations and tastes of your target. A preliminary step is, therefore, being very familiar with your audience (the use of CRM and the creation of personas can facilitate customer knowledge). Further, the design must be attractive, airy, harmonious, impactful, and carefully thought out so that the user can quickly find the information they are looking for and be guided through each step of the purchasing process (in the case of an e-commerce site). For fluid and intuitive navigation, key information must appear in the foreground, the menu must be clear and uncluttered, the contact page easily accessible, and CTAs (Call to Action) placed in strategic locations. Furthermore, visuals must be unique and of excellent quality, and pages must not be overloaded with text.  

Create high-value content

Another key factor to improve the user experience is to create digital content with high added value that responds to what matters to Internet users. Examples can include blog articles, as well as case studies, interviews, white papers, newsletters or videos. This content must be varied, of high quality, and well referenced to attract qualified traffic. It must be accompanied by a strong presence on digital channels such as social networks, in order to encourage engagement and interaction. You should also think about facilitating dialogue using a chatbot, a contact form and contact information in the footer. This can also be optimised by setting up an omnichannel (or cross-channel) path, with both physical and digital contact points. These different tools will greatly contribute to creating a memorable user experience and an optimal customer relationship.  

Analyse user behaviour

To ensure that your website evolves in line with user habits and expectations, you must regularly analyse user behaviour. Google Analytics, for example, is a valuable tool for evaluating the number of unique visitors, the bounce rate, the conversion rate, the abandonment rate, the most visited pages, the number of sales made, etc. Satisfaction questionnaires and feedback forms are also very useful to better detect flaws and areas for improvement. You can then adapt your digital interface in line with these data by rethinking your site’s design and user path, reworking the wording, rebuilding the site architecture, optimising referencing, etc.  

Create a responsive site

According to the Digital Barometer 2019, 51% of French people use their smartphone first for browsing the web. In this era of Mobile-First, a responsive site (i.e., a site designed and developed to adapt to all screen resolutions) is therefore vital for the provision of a good user experience. This enables you to offer an adaptive design and an intuitive navigation whatever the support (mobile, tablet, computer). A multi-media website is also an important factor to boost search engine visibility. To check if your page is adapted to mobile, Google’s Mobile-Friendly test is invaluable.