Your website’s user experience (UX) can play a huge role in determining your success. We’ll show you how to improve it through several UX design tips for Web developers.
What is UX Design?
UX design (aka user experience design) is a process that focuses on optimizing user satisfaction when creating an app or a website. It does this by improving the app or website’s accessibility and usability and making it more efficient in terms of user interaction.
Since confusion can be a significant obstacle to attracting a new customer or retaining an old one, it must be eliminated when implementing UX design. To achieve this goal, you have to take the user into account and step foot in their shoes. Not only do you have to make your product easy to use and accessible, but you also have to factor in things like emotion and even delight so that the customer has an enjoyable experience and correlates positive feelings with your offering.
How can you make that happen? We’ll discuss that now by sharing various UX design tips.
UX Design Tips for Web Developers
Identify Your Target Audience
Since UX design is done with the user in mind, it makes sense that you want to identify who your users will be before creating your app or website. You can do this by:
- Figuring out the demographics (age, gender, job, location, etc.)
- Identifying their interests (food, travel, gaming, etc.)
- Seeing what products they’re already using (apps, devices, etc.)
- Looking at polls, surveys, reviews that give insights into what your target audience wants and needs.
By having such info, it becomes a lot easier to make a list of do’s and don’ts during the design process, so you deliver a positive user experience.
Keep It (UX Design) Simple
A visitor comes to your site with a purpose in mind, and you want to make it as easy as possible for them to achieve it. The more complicated your site is, the harder it will be for your user to find what they want, and the less likely they’ll stick around.
When it comes to UX design, the simpler, the better. There should be no unnecessary components taking up space either on the site or in your user’s mind. The layout should be clean. Whatever graphics you have should provide some insight into your product and be clickable, so they’re functional. You also don’t want to overdo it with colors. Two or three colors should suffice for your scheme, with plenty of white space to fill in any gaps. Also, keep your number of fonts to around two, with a third possibility coming from your logo.
Give Each Page a Goal
Think of why the user would be looking at a page, and make that the page’s single goal. Anything that doesn’t help the user achieve that goal should be discarded or placed elsewhere on the site.
If UX design is implemented correctly, a user shouldn’t have to guess what the page’s goal is. It should be clear and understandable. For example, if they’re on a checkout page, it should only contain what’s needed to complete the transaction. If you want to add more data, such as information that could be helpful, put it at the bottom of the page where it can’t confuse the user.
Use Plenty of Whitespace
As mentioned, one or two colors are all a site needs, as you can use whitespace to fill in any gaps. Whitespace doesn’t necessarily have to be “white” either, as it can be another background color that fills in areas between elements.
What’s so good about whitespace for UX design? It provides breathing room, polish, elegance, and simplicity. It also makes your site easier to scan so the user can pinpoint what they’re looking for without feeling overwhelmed.
Make Page Loading Time a Priority
The longer it takes for a page to load, the more likely your user will head elsewhere, especially since there’s so much competition nowadays. Make sure your page loading time is quick so users can accomplish their goals quickly. Anything over three seconds could be problematic, as research shows over half of users will leave after that much time passes.
Optimize for Mobile
Want to make your site five times more likely to be abandoned? Then don’t optimize it for mobile, as that’ll make users head elsewhere with the quickness.
With over 50 percent of traffic coming from smartphones and other mobile devices, make sure your product is optimized as such by doing things like:
- Making it easy for visitors to interact with a single touch.
- Putting buttons in the center of the screen.
- Making buttons big enough to tap.
Get Visitor Feedback
What better way to improve UX design than getting feedback from your actual visitors? You can do this easily by putting a survey on your site that asks how it could be improved.
Ask your visitors if they had any issues finding content or completing tasks. Did you meet their expectations? Are there any features they’d like to see? Take the feedback and look for any trends or recurring answers that will tell you what needs to be done to improve your UX.