Since the first days of the internet, just a few decades ago, the defining markers of a successful website have changed significantly. While it used to be enough just to have some grainy text and a pixelated logo, nowadays people expect a whole lot more.
From loading speeds to navigability, website visitors have high expectations. As attention on user experience (also known as UX) continues to increase, a focus on UX is becoming increasingly crucial for the success of a website, but why? Let’s take a look.
What is UX?
UX stands for user experience – the overall experience of how a user feels and acts when interacting with and navigating a given website.
When you look at what UX actually means, it makes total sense that it’s crucial for a successful website: a proper focus on UX means that as you’re creating your website, every decision is informed by a consideration of how it will be experienced by website visitors.
UX is focused on your target audience
By now, UX has evolved beyond simply creating a website that’s easy to navigate with an intuitive layout. These things are still important, of course, but to truly optimise UX, you need to focus the website design on the exact kind of person who will be visiting it.
As with everything else in your business, it’s important to first identify your target audience and their habits and preferences, and then use this data to help you to provide a customised service.
Understanding your users is also necessary in order to provide an easily navigable site – you can’t provide easily accessible links to popular pages if you don’t know which pages your visitors want to visit.
Simplicity
For optimal UX, one of the main guiding points that should inform all your design decisions is this: simplicity. People are under a constant barrage of information throughout their day, on the internet and on social media.
Getting a message across is often far more effectively done by saying what you need to say in as few words as possible, without any unnecessary distractions around that message. Stick to between two and four colours, and remember that everything on your website should serve a purpose. If you’ve put something in and you’re not sure why it’s there, take it out.
Use a web design agency
While it’s becoming increasingly popular for people and smaller businesses to design their websites themselves, the result that you’ll get will never be as good as the result that a professional web design agency will be able to achieve. Before getting started on your web design journey, contact a web design agency such as Webheads.
It might be tempting to start the website yourself and then call in an agency when you get stuck, but they will likely have to start over from the very beginning, ending up wasting your initial efforts.
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